It is extraordinary that fraud accounts for nearly 40% of all crime but only about 20% of police resources go into it, which is disproportionately low. The hon. Gentleman is right about the failures of Action Fraud. Every one of us will have seen that in our own constituency caseloads. It is clear from the evidence that we heard that Action Fraud is not working effectively. The stats told us that 876,000 frauds were reported through Action Fraud, CIFAS and UK Finance in 2021. On average, about seven frauds per minute are being committed. Of those 876,000, only about 58,200 were then disseminated for further investigation, and about 28,700 were passed on to the police National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, which sits behind Action Fraud. So even if someone gets through and gets anything done, only a small percentage of the cases are acted on. Ironically, for people who can get their case to court, the conviction rate is about 85%, but only a tiny percentage get to court. We have to do an awful lot more to get these cases to court in the first place, and that means much better treatment of victims and witnesses in those fraud cases.
The chair of the Bar Council, Mark Fenhalls QC, has said that
“this country has to decide whether or not it is interested in taking on the issue of fraud.”
The chief executive officer of CIFAS, Mike Haley, said it was surprising that
“there is no national strategy for fraud. There is an action plan, but it is a plan without a strategy.”
It would not be a bad thing for Ministers to upgrade the action plan into a proper full strategy and to have a Minister with overall responsibility for that action plan.
We need to look at the role of the financial institutions in high street fraud and credit card fraud. Often they are running very profitable retail credit card operations. Perhaps they could make a small investment and show willingness as responsible business people to contribute more towards anti-fraud measures. That might be regarded as a sensible and responsible type of business activity to assist with the significant costs that people have to meet.
We have to recognise that it is not just the big frauds that are international. The CPS, giving evidence to our Committee, stated that 75% of the fraud crimes that it prosecutes have an international element. That does not mean that they are Russian oligarchs or kleptocrats. It might mean that they are coming from foreign servers, for example, or they might be foreign-based scammers hitting not businesses but individuals through insurance fraud, scamming bogus products and so on, while based overseas. We need to find ways of improving our international co-operation around tracking down those matters. This all indicates that although good work is being done, it is not being done at the scale that is necessary or commensurate with the level of the problem and the harm that is done. There is the economic harm, but I stress that there is also social and personal harm, as the Committee heard. I hope we can use the upcoming opportunities to redouble these efforts, and this debate is very timely in that regard. I commend the reports from the all-party parliamentary groups, and I hope the Government will take on board the responses that we will be sending to the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office from the evidence we drew up only recently, as a spur to further and co-ordinated action. That is the most important thing.
1.44 pm