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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what discussions he has had with the Home Secretary on developing a strategy to tackle phone call and text message financial scams.

Officials in our departments have been working closely to explore a range of different measures aimed at tackling the criminal abuse of mobile telecommunications across the different crime types, including fraud.

The Government takes fraud very seriously and will continue to work closely with telecommunications providers, regulators, law enforcement agencies and consumer groups to protect the public from these crimes. This includes developing a voluntary charter of actions that the telecoms companies will implement to prevent fraud.

Later this year, the Government will take further action through a Fraud Action Plan, an approach grounded in prevention, education, effective enforcement and regulatory reforms.