Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what recent assessment they have made of trends in levels of online fraud.

The Home Office collects quarterly data on the number of reports of fraud and Computer Misuse Act (CMA) incidents made to Action Fraud that have been recorded as criminal offences by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB).

This data is published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on a quarterly basis and is available from June 2015 to June 2021 in table A5, which are attached.

Action Fraud reported that levels of fraud have increased since the pandemic. Fraud and CMA offences are collected and presented separately, though some fraud offences will often involve an element of online activity, but we are unable to provide a breakdown of these offences.

Crime Survey for England and Wales data for the proportion of offences flagged as cyber are collected by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) are available for 2016/17 to 2019/20. The latest estimates by ONS for the year to March 2020 suggest that around 53% of all fraud is online enabled.