Scamming: Vulnerable Individuals

Greg Knight Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House believes that the elderly and vulnerable are a high-risk group from having harm done to their financial, emotional and psychological wellbeing from criminals who target them with scam calls, post and visits; praises the work that trading standards bodies do to combat scams; calls on financial institutions and the communications industry to put in place mechanisms to protect potential victims from scams; further calls on the Government to recognise the threat from scams to victims’ ability to live independently; draws attention to the measures proposed by Bournemouth University, the Chartered Trading Standards Institute and National Trading Standards Scams Team on financial harm as useful first steps in tackling such scams; and calls on the Government to make suggestions on further steps to tackle such criminality.

It is difficult to overstate the damage done to our economy and society by fraud and scam artists. Such people prey on some of our most vulnerable citizens and can strike at many points in our lives, whether we are buying a home, hiring a tradesman or investing in our pensions. As a former consumer rights and personal finance journalist, I have seen at first hand the real harm that these fraudsters can do. They not only leave people poorer, but can cause a huge range of health and confidence problems far into the future.

While working for the BBC in 2003, I covered the story of a Southampton pensioner who fell victim to scam artists pretending to represent something called the Canadian lottery. They convinced him to wire £1,600 to Canada as an administration fee to unlock his winnings, which of course never materialised. Instead, there were only escalating demands for more cash, and good money went after bad; indeed, in the end that individual paid out more than £9,000 to those fraudsters. In a particularly cruel twist, I remember he told me that he had been told to wait up with his wife, because someone would call at his house to deliver a cheque for his winnings and a bunch of flowers. The door was never knocked on. When he spoke to the fraudsters again, they laughed down the phone at their own cruelty. It is very easy to form snap judgments about people who fall victim to these sorts of schemes—indeed, the victims often blame themselves, which is one reason why only 5% of cases come to light—when we ourselves have been lucky enough never to fall victim to one.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a good case. Does he agree that these crooks are getting ever more sophisticated? Using scanning technology and the ability to take pictures from the internet, they often copy the logos and trademarks of reputable companies, which makes it even harder to detect the scam.

[Julian Knight]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely correct. There is an ever-rising tide and the methods are becoming more sophisticated. While we are talking about logos, these people use governmental logos—that of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs among others—so that they can pretend to be quasi-governmental. They also use logos that are very similar to governmental logos and those of other institutions. He is quite right to raise that point.

As I say, it is easy for us to rush to snap judgments, and some people do that about what they perceive as their own foolishness. However, the gentleman I was discussing was no fool. He had run his own business for more than 30 years. The scammers were not only persuasive but, as they often do, preyed on his very best instincts, especially the thought of how he could help his children with the winnings.

I thank the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) for co-signing the motion. I also thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have talked to me prior to the debate to recount their stories of constituents who have been affected. I was struck by one from my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), who wrote to tell me that an elderly lady in her constituency was robbed of almost £35,000 by people posing as, of all things, an anti-fraud unit from her local bank. Unfortunately those fraudsters were not caught, and as the banks are not liable, her savings have not been returned. That has had a devastating impact—not just financial but emotional—on the lady concerned.

Those incidents are just two among the thousands that occur each and every year. They highlight why we need to do more to combat this detestable style of crime. I thank the many external organisations that got in touch with me, especially those that provided so much useful data and information, such as the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, Age UK, Financial Fraud Action UK, Standard Life and the Fairway financial consultancy.

The cost of fraud to the economy is truly astonishing. According to the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, it amounts to £52 billion a year. Numbers can get thrown around, but to put that into context, £52 billion is more than we spend on defence or education. If we were to cut that figure by just 10%, we would reinject £5 billion into people’s savings and the wider economy itself. That would equate to much of the economic boost that has come about in recent years due to payment protection insurance payouts.

Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the United Kingdom) Bill

Greg Knight Excerpts

Friday 6th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend not consider, on reflection, that his definition of “qualifying offence” is perhaps a little too wide? It could include a serious motoring offence.

[Mr Bone]

I am grateful for my right hon. Friend’s intervention, but no. A person who has been jailed for up to five years for careless driving should be sent back. We are considering situations where someone has received a term of imprisonment. It is quite difficult to get a term of imprisonment without doing something pretty seriously wrong. I am very clear on this point: if someone comes to this country, accepts our hospitality and then abuses it by committing a criminal offence that leads to imprisonment, they should be excluded from this country, either at the end of the term of imprisonment or earlier, if the Government so wish.

[Sir Greg Knight]

As I read my hon. Friend’s Bill, the person concerned does not have to have been sent to prison; they just have to have committed an offence that “may” be punishable with imprisonment.

[Mr Bone]

My right hon. Friend raises an interesting point. He is referring to clause 1(4):

“‘qualifying offence’ shall mean any offence for which a term of imprisonment may be imposed by a court of law.”

I think the intention is for that to apply to someone who would go to prison, having gone through the judicial system. The Government could at that stage say, “I’m sending you home, rather than you going to prison.” I understand the argument that my right hon. Friend makes—that that may be imposed by a court of law. I sincerely hope he will consider serving on the Bill Committee so that we can look at that in some detail. Now that we have been granted an extra Friday—I am not sure whether everyone in the House realises that we are sitting on 20 March—and as there has been no real explanation of why we are sitting on that day, I assume—

Modern Slavery Bill

Greg Knight Excerpts

Tuesday 4th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Diana Johnson]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point. We shall discuss the GLA later, but the hon. Gentleman’s point shows why we need to think again about the offences in the Bill and how we can make them stronger to ensure that we get more prosecutions.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the offence of exploitation ought to be committed even when the threat of force is against someone other than the person being exploited—against a relative of the person who is being exploited, for example?

[Diana Johnson]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point, which should perhaps be debated more fully in the other place. I absolutely agree that this is a strong point that needs to be considered.

Returning to the low number of prosecutions, in 2011-12 there were 15 prosecutions for slavery offences, but no convictions. Since the introduction of the offence, there has shockingly never been a prosecution where the victim was a child. In 2011, there were 150 prosecutions for trafficking offences, but only eight convictions. To put those figures in context, in 2013 the national referral mechanism received 1,746 separate referrals of cases of human trafficking, 432 of them involving minors. The UK Human Trafficking Centre identified 2,744 victims of human trafficking last year, 600 of whom were deemed to be children.

Criminal Records (Public Access) Bill

Greg Knight Excerpts

Friday 13th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

I agree with the Minister. I made the point at the outset that in due course I would like to see the legislation go further. It would be widely welcomed by the public if further information could be made available in the future. It would add to the transparency agenda, which I know the Government are keen on pursuing.

One side effect of such a Bill, which is not intended to be a crime reduction measure, is that if people knew that their neighbours could easily turn on their computer and check whether someone had been convicted of a criminal offence, that might have the effect of reducing crime in this country.

[Mr Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

Might not the Bill have the opposite effect? If the residents of a street discovered that one resident had a criminal record, they might decide to try to hound him out of the area by threatening and abusive behaviour.

[Mr Nuttall]

That information is already public. We are all aware from our own communities that people will often know whether someone living in their area is constantly visited by the police or has had spells in prison. I hear what my right hon. Friend says, but the provisions would be no more likely to cause an increase in attacks on individuals than is the case at present as a result of the information being in the public domain.

[Mr Knight]

I was only pontificating that it might lead in some circumstances to an incident or incidents, but it is clear from the Bill that public knowledge of those who have convictions is likely to increase. Indeed, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that if the Bill became law, someone might develop an iPhone app, for example, that would show how many people in the neighbourhood had convictions.

[Mr Nuttall]

My right hon. Friend raises an interesting point, which fits neatly with my point about available technology and the sort of database that could be created. It is quite likely that a private sector organisation could put such information into a searchable database on the internet, which, as my right hon. Friend rightly says, could easily be accessed on a mobile phone. That is the way in which the internet is going. It is more and more likely that people will carry their own personal computers around with them—tablets are already available —and if a search can be made on a desktop computer in an office, it can be made as one walks down the street. I see no reason why that should not be the case. I cannot see the problems with that.

The main point is that the information must be accurate. We already have the technology to make that happen; of that there can be no doubt. We have already seen the excellent Home Office website that enables individual householders to search right down to street level to find the number and category of crimes committed in their area. Having seen how complicated that website is, covering every road and street in the entire country, I think that the proposed database would be much easier to construct. Provided that measures were in place to ensure that the information on the register was accurate, which could be done easily by ensuring that people could check their own record free of charge, I see no reason why—