Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate she has made of the annual cost of fraud to UK consumers.

There are no Government estimates of the annual cost of fraud specifically for UK consumers. The Home Office has estimated that the total economic and social cost of fraud to individuals in England and Wales in 2015/2016 was £4.7bn [1].

Data on incidents of fraud is available from two key sources, the ONS Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) and Action Fraud supply data to the Home Office on the number of recorded fraud and computer misuse offences that have been reported to and recorded by them.

The CSEW report that in the year ending March 2020, there were an estimated 914,000 incidents of consumer and retail fraud.

[1]https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/732110/the-economic-and-social-costs-of-crime-horr99.pdf