Cyber-Fraud in the UK

Conor McGinn Excerpts

Tuesday 25th May 2021 Westminster Hall

[Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I can say with confidence, particularly beyond the earshot of other Merseyside MPs, that you are the most distinguished Member in our region, so it is good to see that recognised in the position of authority that you now hold. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore) for securing today’s debate; he has been a tenacious campaigner on the issue and a strong advocate for victims.

Fraud is an utterly devastating crime for individuals, households, businesses and institutions across all of society. It often targets the vulnerable, leaving victims traumatised, hurt and despairing. It shatters personal finances, damages our economy and threatens our national security. With 4 million offences recorded last year—nearly 12,000 incidents per day—fraud is now endemic. It comprises a third of all crime, and nearly one adult in 10 in England and Wales is affected.

With more of us switching to online patterns of communication, banking and working, fraud has risen sharply in those spheres. The City of London police, to whom I pay tribute—the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken), in whose constituency they are situated, mentioned them as well—have claimed that reports of online shopping fraud are at an all-time high. That is a worrying trend, which I fear has been turbocharged by the current covid pandemic, as others have said. Online scams have rocketed by some 1,500%, including shameful NHS-related scams and scams by fraudsters purporting to be from delivery companies. In the past 12 months, we have witnessed an increase in remote banking fraud of 61% and in online shopping and auctions fraud of almost a third, while incidents of remote purchase fraud such as internet order fraud are up by nearly 132,000.

We know that the methods of fraud and the technology used are constantly shifting, so the question is whether the Government have kept up in the way that they should. Sadly, I must say to the Minister that despite increased warnings about the rise in fraud for many years, it is clear to me that the Government still do not seem to have a coherent plan or strategy. I would argue that they have all but given up on tackling it.

Do not take my word for it. We have seen the Minister’s colleagues openly admitting that the police lack the tools needed to properly deal with the crisis. In response to a letter that I sent him in April, the Conservative outgoing police and crime commissioner for Thames Valley—who was the then national lead on fraud, as the Minister knows—said:

“Little is done to combat major fraud…Police forces have neither the time, capacity, nor capability to take on fraud.”

Does the Minister agree with his colleague? If not, could he explain why he was moved to make such critical comments?

We also know that the independent policing inspectorate, in a scathing report, warned that the

“lack of government or national policing strategies for tackling fraud…has profound implications”.

That report was dated April 2019—more than two years ago. In February 2021, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore mentioned, the hugely respected think-tank RUSI highlighted its concerns, which have been outlined.

Let us give the Minister the benefit of the doubt. With a new national cyber-security strategy this year, we can hope that finally the Government will deal with the flaws that have been raised and ensure that resources are allocated to meet the challenge; he may want to touch on that. However, as has been mentioned, other opportunities to act exist. For example, lots of individuals fall victim to fraud online through fake advertisements, often through social media platforms and search engines, yet there was no mention of addressing that specific criminality in the Government’s draft Online Safety Bill. In fact, I do not believe that the words “fraud” or “scam” are mentioned once.

We cannot afford to keep letting the fraudsters get ahead. So I urge the Minister to work, if he can, with his colleagues in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, because I know that the Bill is a joint Bill being developed between the two Departments, and to think again about the opportunity that might exist in the Bill to address this issue.

In conclusion, we live in an increasingly digitally connected age and we need clear cross-Government and cross-system strategies to tackle the rise in cyber-fraud and to protect the public, the UK’s reputation as a safe place to do business and, of course, our wider national security. If the Minister helps to do that, he will have my support and the full support of the Opposition.