Social Media: Scam Adverts and Fraudulent Content

Lord Watts Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right. One of the things that we are trying to do—again, trailing the fraud strategy—is to ensure that we have better criminal justice outcomes for investigations. We are just starting—this will become clearer when the fraud strategy is produced—a better journey for victims of fraud in terms of reporting, keeping them informed and getting to criminal justice outcomes. There is a real wish by the National Crime Agency in particular and the Serious Fraud Office to look at how we can bring criminals to justice. A number of measures have already taken place where we have seized assets and brought people to court, and I want to see that continue. It is vital that we make the UK the hardest place possible for fraudsters to operate, which means not just protection and better investment in telecommunication platform issues but putting in an element of serious risk for those fraudsters to ensure that they end up behind bars or lose their assets.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the regulators often use long consultation periods to do nothing and that the general public want action, not consultation?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

It is important that we get these things right—I say that to my noble friend in the spirit of camaraderie—and sometimes there are issues that take a while to work through. If he is referring to the question of Ofcom and advertising that the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, raised, there is a wish for Ofcom to get it right and to ensure that whatever it does is legally secure in getting it right. I want to give it breathing space to do that. The direction of travel is there to ensure that fraudulent adverts are taken down and not used as a gateway for the very issues that other noble Lords have mentioned today.