Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to tackle financial scams.

We are committed to working with law enforcement, industry, civil society and international partners to tackle financial scams. This includes blocking fraud at its source, disrupting it before it reaches the public, and providing preventative advice and support such as our “Stop! Think Fraud” campaign.

Further industry action includes potential legislative action to ban “SIM farms”, technical devices that allow criminals to send scam texts to thousands of people at the same time, and the Online Safety Act codes of practice which will come into effect in March.

In due course we will publish an expanded Fraud Strategy as set out in our manifesto, which will cover the full range of threats that our society faces from this crime.