Richard welcomes the government’s new long-term ‘Stop! Think Fraud’ campaign, backed by £5 million to deliver tough new anti-fraud messaging, raising public awareness on fraud safety advice in partnership with law enforcement, tech, banking, telecoms and third sector organisations.
This new campaign builds on the government’s long-term Fraud Strategy, set out by the Home Office in May 2023, committing to 52 ambitious actions to cut fraud by ten per cent by the end of this Parliament.
Since 2019, the government has implemented a whole range of long-term reforms to tackle fraud by creating new National Fraud Squad with over 400 new investigators, banning SIM farms which are used by criminals to send thousands of scam texts and stopping cold calls for financial products so people cannot be duped by scammers. We continue to fight telecommunications enabled fraud including by supporting Ofcom’s work to take action against criminals impersonating or ‘spoofing’ the phone numbers of trusted and legitimate organisations like banks, delivery companies or even the NHS. The Treasury have also led a full public consultation on a ban on cold calling for all financial products and services to make it easier for people to identify that unsolicited marketing calls are not legitimate. The ban will come into force in October 2024.
The government has also signed the world’s first Online Fraud Charter, delivering tough long-term action against fraud in partnership with 12 leading tech companies including Amazon, Facebook, Google and X (formerly Twitter).
As a result of these actions, official data shows that the number of fraud and computer misuse incidents in Bedfordshire fell from 4,345 incidents to 3,989 incidents in the last year, a drop of 8.2 per cent.
Commenting, Richard Fuller MP said:
Fraud is the single largest crime, accounting for almost 40% of all offences in England and Wales, with the devastating impact felt across the United Kingdom. That is why in May last year the government published the Fraud Strategy, setting out an ambitious plan to tackle this crime that causes so much harm to the public.
We are making good progress, working with partners across Government, law enforcement and the private sector and I welcome news that the government’s crackdown on fraud has cut fraud referrals by 8.2% in Bedfordshire, but we need to go further to protect people’s hard-earned cash. The launch of the ‘Stop! Think Fraud’ campaign – another Fraud Strategy commitment – is the next step, which will transform the fight against fraudsters by streamlining and amplifying anti-fraud messaging, giving everyone the knowledge and tools to stay ahead of scams.
For more information, please visit https://stopthinkfraud.campaign.gov.uk/
