Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps the Government is taking to ensure (a) retailers and (b) consumers are aware of (i) the ITunes HMRC and (ii) other scams.

HMRC has a dedicated Customer Protection team which targets scams. On iTunes, HMRC has:

• Worked with Apple to introduce warnings on vouchers

• Joined up with gov.uk, Action Fraud, & Financial Fraud Action to increase awareness

• Written to retailers encouraging staff training around i-tunes scams

  To reduce other scams, HMRC has:

• Worked with the mobile industry, delivering a 90% reduction in reported abuse of HMRC branded SMS texts

• Challenged ownership of misleading domains, and diverted over 2m visits to gov.uk educational pages

• Had over 1m visits to gov.uk scam-education pages

• Requested removal of over 12,000 malicious websites since April