Christmas Adjournment

It is always interesting to follow the hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice). All I know is that I am a Conservative—always have been, always will be—and that is what is important to me. Also, it would be churlish not to congratulate the Liberal Democrats on having a new leader—one has emerged, Pope-like, this afternoon. The process was a bit like two bald men fighting over a comb; none the less, we wish them well and look forward to the next election, perhaps in another couple of years. I want to give all hon. Members here a Christmas gift, which is that I intend to speak for only eight minutes. That is the sort of generous guy I am—it costs me nothing, but it is far better to offer that gift than any other, which might have cost me a bit of money. I want to talk about two things before the House adjourns for Christmas, because it is important that we have the opportunity to do so, notwithstanding all the other issues that hon. Members have raised, particularly nitrate zones, on which I hope to secure an Adjournment debate in the new year, so that the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs can answer that important point. I am chairman of the all-party group on identity fraud. It has become quite apparent that the money that we ought to be spending on making people aware of ID fraud is not being spent. One of the biggest advertisers in the UK is Her Majesty's Government, who spend a fortune on advertising all sorts of things, telling people how wonderful they are on every issue under the sun. That is not so when it comes to combating ID fraud. We need to invest a lot of money in tackling that. It cost the UK £1.7 billion last year, and it is one of the fastest-growing crimes. I wish to raise one particular aspect given the time of year. Everybody is busy Christmas shopping, and a lot of people—a record number this year—will be shopping online. When they are online, and busy doing their e-mails as well, they receive e-mails which they believe to be from their bank, credit card company, PayPal, or whatever, and which look authentic, to all intents and purposes. They have all the symbols, and it looks as if they have come from the institution that they are pretending to come from, but they have not—they have come from fraudsters saying, ““Your online account has been suspended: please put your user name and password here and it will be reactivated.”” Of course, I do not know what happens if people do that, because I have never done it. I was alerted to it initially because I was sent one by a bank that I do not have an account with, so I knew that my online account could not have been suspended. However, many people who get one of these e-mails and it happens to be from the bank that they bank with, and who have never come across the concept of phishing, as it is called, may accidentally or in a hurry fill in the details and send it off, and it then goes directly to a fraudster who will attempt to use it to get the money from their account.