The Home Office has brought out a fraud strategy. It marks a fundamental shift in our approach to tackling fraud, Home Secretary Suella Braverman said in a foreword to the document.
It confirms an end to the much-unloved Action Fraud reporting service, that Police Scotland pulled out of. The strategy admits to ‘shortcomings’ in Action Fraud; a Boris Johnson-era crime strategy mentioned in passing that Action Fraud would be replaced. The strategy stated that ‘the Home Office, the City of London Corporation and CoLP [City of London Police, the lead force for countering fraud] are committed to improving this vital service. For this reason, the Home Office has committed to spend over £30m across three years, alongside contributions from the City of London Corporation, to replace and improve the service’.
The strategy stated that the new replacement will launch within a year. “For victims this will mean a totally new reporting service, including an upgraded call centre that will reduce waiting times, as well as the new portal for victims to get updates on the progress of their report’.
Numerous parliamentary and National Audit Office reports have pointed to failings in how the authorities handle fraud from victim support to investigation and prosecution (or rather lack of). The strategy has promised an independent review ‘into the challenges of investigating and prosecuting fraud’, including whether the Fraud Act 2006 (which made fraud a set offence) needs updating.
Ms Braverman wrote: “Fraud causes severe harm to the economy, places enormous stress on families and businesses, and ruins people’s lives. Fraud also funds other serious crimes. This Government will not tolerate the barrage of scam texts, phone calls, adverts, and emails that causes misery to millions and makes up over 40 per cent of all crime. This strategy sets out a plan to stop fraud at source and pursue those responsible wherever they are in the world. Most importantly, victims must know that the police will do something about their crime. Fraud now accounts for over 40pc of crime but receives less than 1pc of police resource. I am changing this by setting up a new National Fraud Squad (NFS) dedicated to pursuing the most sophisticated and harmful fraudsters, with over 400 new specialist investigators, and making tackling fraud a priority for police forces in England and Wales.”
She summed up: “Government, law enforcement, and industry must now come together and do all we can to show fraudsters that their time is up and that together we can beat fraud.”
The strategy has not proposed to force businesses such as banks to do things; rather, the Government is continuing its policy of arranging ‘Charters’, voluntary agreements by business sectors such as telecoms. In her foreword Ms Braverman singled out ‘online technology giants, who should do more to stop criminals exploiting their services and should never profit from online crime. We will publish information about which platforms are the safest and ensure that companies are properly incentivised to combat fraud, exploring all avenues to do this.’
An ‘online fraud charter’ is promised for publication by the end of this summer. The strategy acknowledged that Artificial Intelligence large language models such as ChatGPT and Google Bard can allow fraudsters to create ever more persuasive fraudulent communications, email and voice calls. As part of ‘engagement’ with the tech sector the Government intends ‘to work closely with providers to ensure that fraud prevention remains a priority’, the document stated.
As a further example of how the Government is only to place voluntary requirements on business, the strategy said that the Joint Fraud Taskforce (JFT) of Government and business in November agreed to measure the impact of the work of industry in preventing fraud. “Once a baseline is established, we will set voluntary targets for companies to reduce fraud,” the strategy said.
Comments
Rocio Concha, Director of Policy and Advocacy at the consumer advice body Which?, said: “The fight against fraud has progressed far too slowly in recent years and in particular more action is needed to guarantee that big tech platforms take serious action against fraud. The government must ensure that the Online Safety Bill delivers meaningful protections for consumers against a flood of online fraud infiltrating the world’s biggest search engines and social media sites.
“It’s positive to see the government at last producing a strategy that recognises a joined-up approach with the ambition that data is shared between industry and law enforcement is needed to tackle the UK’s fraud epidemic, which has such a devastating financial and emotional toll on the lives of victims.
“Ultimately, consumers will judge the success of this strategy by whether they end up with better fraud detection, prevention, support and redress.”
Mike Haley, pictured, CEO of the counter-fraud trade body Cifas, said: ‘Following on from the recent publication of the Economic Crime Plan, today’s strategy and appointment of Anthony Browne MP as Anti-Fraud Champion represents a strong commitment to upping the law enforcement and Government response to fraud and financial crime.
‘The additional investment in policing resource is welcome, but remains dwarfed by an ever-growing range of fraud threats. I therefore especially welcome the further commitment to share law enforcement data with industry, and through this better protect the public and businesses from fraud and its many harms.
‘This commitment must be delivered upon to take the fight to fraudsters, and it is owed to the victims of their crimes.’
The Association of Police and Crime Commissioner’s National Fraud Lead, Avon and Somerset PCC Mark Shelford, said: “Prevention and resilience are key to disrupting criminals who exploit people and businesses for their own financial gain. The introduction of the new Proactive Economic Crime Teams within each regional economic crime unit will provide regional teams with the capability to detect fraudsters at the earliest opportunity and prevent wider harm to our communities.
“However, our local police forces are the engine house of policing in England and Wales and this strategy must recognise and support them in investigating fraud cases in their areas as a key step in tackling this crime.” Recruitment and retention of financial investigators continues to be a real challenge and we cannot tackle fraud without a full resourced capability, he added.
And Director General of the Association of British Insurers, Hannah Gurga said: “As the single biggest type of crime in England and Wales, causing misery to millions and often affecting the most vulnerable, it’s vital that we unite in our efforts to tackle fraud as quickly as possible. We fully support the Government’s approach of using partnerships to harness the capabilities and resources of the public and private sector to drive out the scammers and restore people’s faith. We look forward to continuing to work with the Government on the development of a charter to make our sector more resilient to insurance fraud.”
Champion
Anthony Browne, the Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire was, as the strategy stated, chief executive of the trade body the British Bankers’ Association, and is a member of the Treasury Select Committee. The post has echoes of the ‘Prime Minister’s Anti-Corruption Champion’; the last one, Conservative MP John Penrose, was among those who resigned in the death throes of the Boris Johnson premiership last year and has not been replaced.
