Fraud Bill [Lords]

That is an interesting and important point but it is not one for the law on fraud. The hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) emphasised the need to ensure that the law is as simple as possible. The Bill will do that—it will help to simplify a range of deception offences. It will help juries and magistrates to deal with what, as he and I know, can be extremely complex matters. On the issue of why ““knowing or intending”” is not included in clause 6, we should bear it in mind that we are building on existing offences and that the ““going equipped”” offence in the Theft Act 1968 applies not only to burglars but to those who have equipment to commit a fraud, which it describes as a cheat. The only problem with that Act is that it does not apply to fraudsters who operate from home. We already have nearly 40 years’ experience of the operation of that provision and we are not aware of any problems of innocent persons being troubled by it. The hon. Member for Broxbourne pointed out, in his wide-ranging but interesting speech, that fraud is not a victimless crime. The Bill will help to tackle many of the examples that he gave of victims of fraud. We have faced a growing threat from fraud. Tackling it requires effort by all concerned on several fronts and on prevention as well as enforcement. However, modernisation of existing criminal law is one essential building block. The existing statutory offences are specific and overlapping, yet they are not related to each other to convey the variety of fraudulent behaviour in an organised way. That untidiness in the law means that it is not always clear which offence should be charged and defendants have successfully argued that their particular deceptive behaviour did not fit the definition of the offence with which they had been charged. Our reform efforts date back to 1998, when the then Home Secretary asked the Law Commission to consider whether a general offence of fraud would improve the criminal law. This is a tricky area of the law and the commission consulted stakeholders and gave the issue the most careful consideration. The 2002 report was the result. It decided that it was not a realistic solution to plug loopholes in fraud law by adding more specific offences, as has been done in the past. Such piecemeal law reform leads not only to further complexities and the potential for charging defendants wrongly, but means that the law will always be lagging behind any development in technology or new methods of committing fraud—a point that the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) made.