Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how many people (a) signed up to and (b) have been actively involved with the National Trading Standards' Friends Against Scams initiative in the past twelve months.

The National Trading Standards Annual Report (2020-21) states that between April 2020 and March 2021, 324,296 ‘Friends’ have signed up and pledged their action as part of the initiative, which has recently celebrated its fourth anniversary. This brought the total number of ‘Friends’ to 738,440 by the end of March 2021. The initiative gained an additional 292 ‘SCAMchampions’, who drive the initiative forward for example by running in person awareness sessions to recruit ‘Friends’, bringing the total to 2,088. The initiative also gained 5 ‘SCAMbassadors’, who are MPs and senior officials who use their influence to raise the profile of the work and highlight scams at a national level, bring that total to 211. A further 31 national and local organisations have pledged their support to the initiative across the UK, bring that total to 269. Finally, an additional 400 ‘Scam Marshals’ have signed up, who are former targets of scams who help to fight back using their own experiences, bringing that total to 1920.