Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps her Department is taking to improve the (a) regulation and (b) oversight of email service providers in relation to the use of (i) email diversion scams and (ii) impersonation fraud.

The government recognises the harm associated with scam emails and is taking action to protect the public and businesses from fraud and cyber crime. We strongly encourage the public and businesses to follow the advice from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) on how to protect themselves from cyber threats, including scam emails and business email compromise. The NCSC provides tailored advice for the public, sole traders and businesses of all sizes. The government also offers the highly effective Cyber Essentials scheme to help organisations protect themselves against common cyber attacks.

Scam emails can be reported to the NCSC's Suspicious Email Reporting Service, which has blocked billions of phishing attempts and removed 232,000 scams across 415,000 malicious web addresses. The NCSC offers guidance on how to spot and report scam emails at https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/phishing-scams. The police also offer advice on scam emails, including Action Fraud advice on payment diversion fraud and business email compromise, and the recent National Crime Agency campaign with the Law Society on payment diversion fraud in property sales. The government has committed to the publication of a new fraud strategy which will set out further details on how it will tackle fraud and protect UK residents and businesses.