David Pinto-Duschinsky

I am sorry to hear about what has happened to my hon. Friend’s constituents. She is of course right that these kinds of crimes must be investigated—we must see consistent and robust investigation, a point I will touch on later in my speech. The figures are stark. Under the last Conservative Government, fraud surged at every level. Between 2010 and 2024, reported fraud cases in the UK more than doubled, making it the single most prevalent crime type in the country. According to the crime survey for England and Wales, fraud now accounts for more than 40% of all crime. That is more than 4.1 million incidents in 2024 alone—or, put another way, one incident every 10 seconds. It is a sign of how ubiquitous fraud has become that we have almost stopped noticing the fraud attempts we all face every day—the dodgy emails and texts, the suspicious phone calls, the fake listings on online marketplaces. Many of us now just accept the regular attempts to defraud us as part of the weft and weave of modern life. The economic impact has been enormous. UK Finance estimates that more than £1.1 billion was stolen by fraudsters last year, including nearly £460 million in authorised push payment scams. The public purse has also come under attack, with up to £55 billion in public money lost to benefit and procurement fraud and other types of economic crime. But it is not just about the economic cost: the human cost has been enormous too, paid in the currency of suffering and lives turned upside down. It is hard to overstate how shattering fraud is for its victims. This explosion in scams, great and small, has been driven by increasingly sophisticated, increasingly transnational and increasingly organised criminality, and sharpened by rapid innovation and technological evolution. Some 67% of all fraud in the UK is now cyber-enabled. Fraud is no longer just about opportunistic criminals and simple phishing emails; criminals have become highly sophisticated, harnessing the power of technology in alarming ways. The use of artificial technology and deepfake technology is now commonplace, not just in social media, but in the execution of daring scams against major companies. For example, in February last year, a company lost more than £20 million as a result of a chief executive officer scam, where AI was used to fool executives into thinking that they were dealing with their boss. Meanwhile, sophisticated fraud-as-a-service websites such as Russian Coms have helped domestic criminals to use advanced technology to defraud the public. Our institutions are caught in a never-ending arms race against ever more adept and advanced criminality. All too often, the growth of fraud has also been enabled by the inaction of some players across the ecosystem. Banks and financial institutions have generally stepped up their efforts to limit retail fraud, and last year stopped more than £1.4 billion of fraudulent payments, as well as paying out £1.2 billion in compensation. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for major tech companies. They have often failed to take sufficient steps to combat the fraud propagated on or through their platforms and have not put in sufficiently robust “know your customer” and transaction monitoring controls, or even used the systems they already have. Their failure to act has left the social media and online commerce landscape vulnerable and has exacted a large price on others. Law enforcement has also struggled to keep up with the threat. Under the last Government, despite its accounting for almost half of all crime, fraud received only between 1% and 2% of police budgets, and enforcement was often hamstrung by poor infrastructure and limited collaboration between forces. The story on major fraud, bribery and economic crime shows strong parallels. The threat has grown significantly and is increasingly transnational in scope. Just as the authorities have historically struggled against the evolving fraud we see in our daily lives, so the institutions focusing on major fraud and the enforcement of our anti-bribery laws, in particular the SFO, have often struggled as well. I need not rehearse here some of the challenges the SFO has faced with failed prosecutions, insufficient powers, questions over leadership and a lack of resources. However, in recent times under the current Government, we are beginning to see real change. The Government are driving a strategy to tackle the fraud challenge. There is renewed focus on tackling the frauds that affect us all. The police and the National Crime Agency are seeking to invest in increased capacity and strengthen inter-force collaboration to tackle cross-country and transnational threats. Central Government are also strengthening the tools available to combat fraud in the benefit and procurement systems with, for example, the measures in the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill, which had its Third Reading in the Commons recently. After years of the previous Government failing to update the powers that Departments such as the Department for Work and Pensions had, leaving them with 20th-century powers to fight a 21st-century problem, this Government are finally getting the modern, anti-fraud tools they need. Critically, the SFO is undergoing positive change. Under new leadership, the organisation has published a five-year strategy focused on upgrading its capabilities, making smarter use of intelligence and driving co-ordinated enforcement. There are more reforms on the table aimed at further improving its reach and effectiveness, from enhancing international co-operation to bringing in financial incentives for whistleblowers. There is of course further to go, but the Serious Fraud Office is evidently becoming more effective, and has recently achieved some notable successes. However, if we are to tackle fraud and economic crime at all levels, these welcome improvements in policy and institutional effectiveness will need to be matched by changes across the whole anti-financial crime landscape. We will need to see stronger partnerships and collaboration, including among the police, better implementation and some actors, especially the big tech firms, stepping up to the plate. Online platforms should, for example, implement effective identity verification for commerce, enhance their monitoring and takedown procedures and, crucially, contribute to compensation when fraud occurs. I am sure that, over the course of the debate, we will hear discussion of many facets of this problem, and I am conscious that I have not had the opportunity in my remarks to touch on issues ranging from the policing of money laundering to making progress on issues such as ultimate beneficial ownership. However, all these points ultimately have in common the essential nature of this fight. This is a national challenge. The human cost of economic crime is devastating. We cannot afford to treat small fraud as trivial, or grand fraud and economic crime as inevitable. Both are corrosive; both must be tackled, and that must be done across Government and in banks, big tech and law enforcement. It is a necessary fight that this Government are already taking on, and a fight we can ill afford to lose.