Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will bring forward legislative proposals to mandate information sharing between (a) payment service providers, (b) social media platforms and (c) telecommunications companies for the purposes of (i) investigating, (ii) detecting and (iii) preventing economic crime.

The Government strongly supports the sharing of information across sectors to tackle economic crime and has legislated to make this easier.

The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act contains new measures to provide greater comfort for firms working in the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulated sector to share relevant information for the purposes of tackling economic crime. Further information on these measures cane be found here: Factsheet: information sharing measures - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The Act also includes the power for the Secretary of State to amend the offences covered, so that law enforcement and businesses can be responsive to future changes in the patterns of economic crime.

The Government is leading an ambitious Public-Private Economic Crime Data Strategy. This will build on the commitments in the Economic Crime Plan 2, Fraud Strategy, and from industry in the Online Fraud and Telecoms Charters to improve information sharing.

We are not currently considering further legislation.