Banks: Forgery

Lord Watts Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I am afraid that I cannot; I am not familiar with the case. As I said, we maintain that the NECC should have operational independence, so I am afraid that I cannot enlighten the noble Baroness any further. I neglected to answer the noble Lord’s request for a meeting; there have been a number of meetings with Home Office officials, but I would of course be happy to meet him.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords, is it the case that the Government are on the side of fat-cat bankers rather than customers? Would it not be a good idea to give more resources to the police so that they can actually investigate, prosecute and bring to justice these people?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad that the noble Lord has raised the subject of resources, because we are giving them: the spending review last year allocated a further £400 million to tackle economic crime over the next three years. This includes £100 million earmarked specifically to target fraud, including by establishing a national fraud policing network, including greater fraud investigative capacity in the NCA, meeting a manifesto commitment to create a new national cybercrime force focused on fraud. In addition, new fraud investigation teams have been piloted in four regional organised crime units, which will be expanded and rolled out across all ROCUs. These new capabilities are driven by a new tasking and co-ordination process run by the NECC. Finally, as part of the police uplift, we are prioritising more investigators for the City of London Police, which leads on this.