Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate the Government has made of the number of people who have lost money through telephone scams in (a) UK, (b) Scotland and (c) Linlithgow and East Falkirk Constituency in each of the last five years.

Victims of fraud and cyber crime in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are encouraged to report these crimes directly to a centralised reporting centre called Action Fraud. Fraud victims in Scotland also reported crimes directly into Action Fraud until December 2019, when Police Scotland decided that victims should report incidents directly to them, via their 101 service. These reports are now recorded separately from Action Fraud data.

Action Fraud does not categorise fraud reports by the mode in which the fraud was conducted. Fraud can often encompass several different methods of communication, so it may not necessarily be clear to the victim what the primary vector for this kind of criminal attack was. Victim locations are only recorded when sufficient information is provided. For these reasons, the data requested is not held centrally.

If the MP is concerned about fraud levels in his constituency, he should contact the City of London Police and Police Scotland directly. Whilst they will not be able to provide the data requested, they should be able to discuss fraud in his constituency with him in more depth.