Fraud

(asked on 16th June 2021) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to tackle fraud and economic crime.


Answered by
Kevin Foster Portrait
Kevin Foster
This question was answered on 23rd June 2021

The recently published Economic Crime Plan Statement of Progress sets out a Forward Delivery Plan with commitments on tackling fraud and economic crime for 2021-22. This includes the development of a Fraud Action Plan, the relaunching of the Joint Fraud Taskforce and the piloting of dedicated fraud investigation teams.

As part of the Police Uplift Programme to recruit an additional 20,000 officers by 2023, we have prioritised more investigators in the City of London Police to fulfil their role as a world class fraud specialist force. We have also channelled additional officer resource into the Regional Organised Crime Unit network to work on a host of serious and organised crime threats including fraud.

We have also been working closely alongside the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) who launched their Suspicious Email Reporting Service last year. This has already led to extremely positive results. It has already seen high levels of success and, as of the end of February, the total number of reports received stand at more than 5,000,000 with the removal of more than 36,000 scams and 71,000 URLs.

We are encouraging the public to forward suspicious emails to report@phishing.gov.uk and to forward suspicious text messages to 7726 (which is free of charge). Any reports of fraud, including coronavirus related, should be made to Action Fraud. This information is being used by law enforcement partners, alongside crime reports to identify, disrupt and stop fraudsters.

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