Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many fraud offences were recorded by Action Fraud in each year since 2013; and how many of those offences were then passed onto the police.

The Home Office collects data from the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) on the number of recorded fraud offences in England and Wales, including offences recorded by Action Fraud. These data, which are published by the ONS, are available on their website at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice#datasets (see ‘Crime in England and Wales: Appendix tables’ – Table A4).

The Home Office also collects data on the number of dissemination packages that were transferred to the police. Dissemination packages contain cases of reported fraud that NFIB have assessed as having sufficient grounds to allocate it to a police force for investigation. One dissemination package could contain multiple fraud offences. Disseminations data are published by the Home Office and are available on Gov.uk at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/crime-outcomes-in-england-and-wales-2015-to-2016 (see ‘Crime Outcomes in England and Wales: year ending March 2016 – data tables’ – Table B1).