Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to tackle Authorised Push Payment fraud occurring (a) online or (b) on telecoms networks.

Through the Fraud Strategy 2026-29, the Government is working with industry, regulators and law enforcement to prevent criminals exploiting online platforms and telecommunications networks to commit fraud.

The Government designated fraud an illegal harm under the Online Safety Act, and since March 2025 in-scope platforms have been required to maintain robust systems to prevent and remove fraudulent content. In July, Ofcom have also set out their proposed measures for the largest social media and search services to adopt to tackle fraudulent paid adverts.

We have established the new Online Crime Centre, backed by over £30 million of investment, bringing together law enforcement, Government, GCHQ and industry partners to identify and disrupt the technological enablers of fraud.

We are also working with industry to improve transparency, accountability and performance in tackling fraud.

In November 2025, we launched the second Telecoms Fraud Charter, containing over 50 actions to identify, prevent and disrupt telecoms-enabled fraud. This includes preventing criminals reaching users through effective data sharing between telecom providers and the banking sector.

The Government also legislated through the Crime and Policing Act 2026 to ban SIM farms, which are commonly used to send scam texts at scale, and continues to work with Ofcom and industry to tackle number spoofing and scam calls.