Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, pursuant to the statement of the Prime Minister to the Liaison Committee on 7 July 2021, Q79, that one of the key objectives of the Online Safety Bill is to tackle online fraud, what plans he has for the Bill to tackle online fraud other than user-generated content.

Online fraud is in scope of the Online Safety Bill. This means that companies in scope of regulation will need to take action to tackle fraud, where it is facilitated through user-generated content or via search results.

Government is currently working with industry to remove the vulnerabilities that fraudsters exploit, with intelligence agencies to shut down known fraudulent infrastructure, and with law enforcement to identify and bring the most harmful offenders to justice. We are also working to ensure that the public have the advice and support they need.

We are continuing to explore additional legislative and non-legislative solutions to tackle fraud in the round. The Home Office is developing an ambitious Fraud Action Plan, which will be published after the 2021 Spending Review. The Online Advertising Programme, led by DCMS, will also consider further regulation of online advertising to reduce online fraud and we will be consulting on it later this year.