UK Parliament / Open data

Christmas Adjournment

Proceeding contribution from Nigel Evans (Conservative) in the House of Commons on Tuesday, 18 December 2007. It occurred during Adjournment debate on Christmas Adjournment.
Absolutely. The Government should be doing more, and so should the financial institutions. Every statement that they put out should say, ““This statement should either be filed away or properly destroyed or incinerated.”” They should also tell people that in no way would they ask for that sort of information. It is clever little ruse that is being operated, and I can understand why people may be providing this information, so my message would be that institutions will not be asking for it. PayPal tells me that if anybody receives a fraudulent e-mail, it has a team who look to trace it back. That is what all the institutions should be doing, including the Royal Bank of Scotland. They should all have teams of people investing money in trying to track down those fraudsters. If anybody has filled in one of these things and now thinks that it might be fraudulent, they should get in touch with their financial institution so that at least their account can be flagged up and if there is any unusual activity it can be nipped in the bud. If they are really worried, they should change their account numbers and passwords. This Christmas-time, I would say: ““For goodness' sake, beware. Everybody is busy, but we do not want to make the fraudsters' Christmas and ruin our 2008 by being lax and giving our financial information away.”” I promise that I will not take the injury time that has been added on, but I want to make a suggestion, also in the spirit of Christmas, about the modernisation of the House. As the topical debate that we have on a Thursday sort of works, and the topical questions certainly work, on a Monday morning we should have, from 9 o'clock to half past 12, a debate in this Chamber entitled ““I read it in the Sunday papers—surely it cannot be true””. I do not know what other hon. Members are like, but my blood pressure goes through the roof by the time I have got to page five of The Mail on Sunday, never mind The Sunday Telegraph or all the other newspapers. We read those stories and if there is anyone else in the room we say, ““Have you read this? This certainly cannot be true. They wouldn't be doing this, would they?”” This Sunday was no different from any other. I had to sit down and have a cup of coffee as I thought to myself, ““This story cannot be true.””
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
469 c788-9;469 c786-7 
Session
2007-08
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
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