Prevent: Learning Review
David Burton-Sampson Excerpts(1 week, 3 days ago)
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David Burton-Sampson (Southend West and Leigh) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Minister, and of course the Home Secretary, for coming to this place for this statement. None of us in the House can imagine the pain, the suffering and the anger that the Amess family are going through after losing their beloved Sir David: their father and husband. I have met the family, and they are still in absolute devastation. We should hold them in our thoughts today.
We should never forget Sir David. I pay tribute to him and to his family for the way in which they have conducted themselves throughout this whole sorry affair. I will continue working closely with the family as well as with the Home Secretary and her team to ensure that they get the support and the answers that they need.
We will never forget Sir David in Southend. We will shortly be putting some memory boards up on the Chalkwell lifeguard station that reflect Sir David’s life and our journey to becoming a city. I thank Lady Julia and the local councillors for working closely with me on the project.
I welcome the news today that the Prevent commissioner will be reviewing this case and the implementation of recommendations in relation to it. I am glad to hear that the Home Secretary has written to Essex police about the complaint that has been logged. I thank her for her support on that. It is important that that is seen through so that once again the family get the answers that they deserve. I ask the Minister, and obviously the Home Secretary, to give me an assurance that they will continue to work closely with me and, most importantly, the Amess family, so that we can get them those answers and give them the comfort to enable them to move on with their lives. They will never forget, but we can help them to move forward.
Dan Jarvis
I very grateful to my hon. Friend, not least because this is an issue of the most profound importance to his constituents. He is completely right that we must hold Sir David’s family in our thoughts and in our hearts today. He is also completely right that we should strive to ensure— and I know that we will—that we never forget Sir David.
My hon. Friend is in his place close to where I remember Sir David used to stand. Sir David was, among many other things, a complete master of the pre-recess Adjournment debate. I can see him now standing there confidently, expertly and authoritatively reeling off a very long list of requests that he completely expected the Government to get on with and deliver for his constituents. He was truly inspirational. We will never forget him.
I absolutely give my hon. Friend the assurance he seeks that we will continue to work closely with the family and with all hon. Members to ensure that, through the work of the independent Prevent commissioner and the work I referenced earlier with regard to the Home Secretary writing to Essex police, the family get the answers that they rightly deserve.
Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse
David Burton-Sampson Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. I need Members to work with me so that we can get in the final 10 questions; otherwise, there will be a lot of disappointment. If Members have not been here and bobbing throughout, there is no point in them trying to catch my eye now.
David Burton-Sampson (Southend West and Leigh) (Lab)
I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement, which was full of action. I am pleased that last week I supported the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill so that we can start implementing much-needed safeguarding measures—unlike some Conservative Members, who attempted to wreck the Bill and spread misinformation, which led to online abuse towards many Members. Does the Home Secretary share my concern about the most rapidly evolving forms of child sexual abuse taking place online, including through artificial intelligence-facilitated child sexual abuse material? Can she outline what plans the Government have to strengthen the law in this area?
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is exactly right. In addition to the measures in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, including on the proper identification of children to strengthen child protection, which is crucial, we need much stronger measures to tackle online abuse and exploitation. I am really worried about the pace at which this problem is escalating, about the fact that it involves online grooming, abuse and indecent images, and about the impact of drawing young people into contact abuse. We will bring forward new laws in this area.
Financial Fraud and Economic Crime
David Burton-Sampson Excerpts(5 months, 1 week ago)
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David Burton-Sampson (Southend West and Leigh) (Lab)
I welcome the Minister to his place and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Mr Charters) on securing this massively important debate. This is a subject that I have been more than aware of throughout my entire professional career. In the light of that, I also declare an interest: I have been working in the financial services industry for many years.
According to the UK fraud costs measurement committee, the level of fraud in the UK directly affecting consumers in 2023 was estimated to be a staggering £8 billion. The former Conservative Government did not prioritise economic crime sufficiently, according to the Treasury Committee. Now, it is up to the new Government to take action to improve the supervisory system and combat economic crime, which is growing. Improvements need to be made to assess the extent of economic crime and fraud in the UK—it is telling that there are no clear measures of the true impact of fraud on individuals, businesses and the economy. Some of my hon. Friend’s suggestions will help us to get a real understanding of the impact.
A wide range of crimes fall under the category of fraud and economic crime, and the sums of money involved range from small to huge. To give a personal example, only last month in my constituency in Southend, some of my constituents were left feeling tricked, over—believe it or not—an inflatable fun day. They bought tickets in good faith, but it was a fictitious event. Some parents were left out of pocket after buying a number of the £15 tickets online, and clearly children were left very upset. Those sorts of things should not happen, but it is one small example of how fraud can impact families on a day-to-day basis.
The police force in my county of Essex has a serious economic crime unit, which seized £2 million-worth of assets and made 15 arrests in February alone after an intensive, month-long investigation. The squad investigates offences including romance scams, online marketplace scams, rogue traders, investment fraud, bribery and corruption.
As my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer mentioned, fraud can have a devastating impact on individuals and their families, affecting not only their finances but their wellbeing, leaving them feeling manipulated and deceived. Of course, there is the long-term impact on their finances, which has a knock-on impact on the economy, as people no longer have their hard-earned savings to spend on much-needed goods and services, or just on enjoying themselves.
As I have mentioned, my background before coming to this place was in financial services, most recently in mortgages. With your indulgence, Ms Vaz, I will share a different type of fraud, where the consumer often unwittingly targets the lender. It is not usually out of malice, but done with the desire of achieving their housing dream, which for many can be seen as out of reach due to loan-to-income restrictions and high deposit requirements. Mortgage fraud can include overvaluing properties, overstating a salary or income, concealing a second mortgage from the primary lender or mis-stating the use of a property to either benefit from a more preferential rate of interest or to borrow more than the lender assesses that a client can afford.
The UK’s leading fraud prevention service, Cifas, revealed in January 2024 that one in six of UK adults—16%—admitted that they or somebody they knew had misled mortgage companies about their annual salary in order to buy their home. I agree with Cifas that more needs to be done to raise awareness of how serious a crime mortgage fraud can be. Not being honest about one’s income, debt history, employment or the value of the property is a serious matter. Being caught will have long-term effects on one’s ability to gain a mortgage, and could have other financial consequences.
I call on the Minister and the new Government to work with the relevant partners and stakeholders to strengthen and expand the fraud strategy that was announced in May 2023 to combat the ever-growing and more sophisticated fraudulent schemes that target individual consumers. Equally, awareness needs to be raised among consumers about the consequences of them falling unexpectedly into the world of fraud when applying for finance, especially mortgages. I would like to see collaboration between banks and other lenders, the regulator and the Government, to drive awareness of mortgage fraud through misrepresentation. That, of course, would be complemented by the Government’s plans to make the dream of home ownership more accessible for all.