Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment her Department has made of the effectiveness of Action Fraud in referring reports of fraud and internet crime to the police.

Action Fraud is the national reporting point for fraud and financially-motivated cyber crime. It takes reports of crimes from members of the public and businesses online or via its dedicated helpline. These reports are then analysed by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB), which looks for links between separate victims of the same scams, and matches information in Action Fraud reports with other data it holds. The NFIB then prepares intelligence packages and sends these to the police force best placed to consider enforcement action. It also carries out work to disrupt the enablers of this criminality, such as having websites used by criminals taken down.

Both Action Fraud and the NFIB are part of the City of London Police, which is the national lead force for fraud. The Government brought Action Fraud into the City of London Police in April 2014 to strengthen the end-to-end process for reporting and analysis of reports of fraud. In 2013/14, there were 40,000 intelligence packages disseminated to police forces for enforcement action. We expect this number to increase this year and are working with the City of London Police, and their partners to deliver further improvements.

We continue to work with the City of London Police to ensure as many crimes as possible are sent to police forces, and that victims of crime are kept up-to-date with the progress of their report.