Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the implications for her policies on budgeting priorities of the findings of the National Audit Office report, Progress combatting fraud, published 15 November 2022, that crimes relating to fraud have increased by 12 per cent since 2017 and that charges and summons are falling.

The Home Office welcomed the publication of the National Audit Office report and recognises the substantial increasing risk that fraud poses to UK residents and businesses.

To support law enforcement to identify and bring the most harmful offenders to justice, we have already invested £400 million through Spending Review 2021 in tackling economic crime including fraud. This is in addition to the funding that the Home Office commits each year to the National Economic Crime Centre in the National Crime Agency (NCA), and police forces. We recognise that further action is required, and we will shortly publish a new strategy to address the rising threat of fraud, which will set out the outcomes we are aiming to achieve.