Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many reports have been made by members of the public to Action Fraud since its creation; how many of those reports have been referred to a police force; and how many of those referred reports have led to a substantive criminal investigation by the police.

The Home Office collects data on the number of fraud and Computer Misuse Act (CMA) cases reported to Action Fraud that have been recorded as criminal offences by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB).

Such data is published by the Office for National Statistics on a quarterly basis and the most recently available data for the year ending March 2020 can be found, along with a time series, in Table A4 here: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/datasets/crimeinenglandandwalesappendixtables.

The Home Office also collects information on the number of fraud and CMA offences that the NFIB refer to police forces for investigation and on the number of fraud and CMA outcomes recorded by the police. This data is published annually as part of the Home Office’s ‘Crime Outcomes in England and Wales’ publication. The latest available data for year ending March 2020 can be found be here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/crime-outcomes-in-england-and-wales-statistics

City of London Police also produce an interactive dashboard of their statistics which shows a breakdown of dissemination rates and outcomes at force level. This can be found here: https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/data