Chi Onwurah – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Chi Onwurah on 2015-12-10.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to raise awareness amongst solicitors of the risks of their clients being targeted in scams by people purporting to operate in the name of their solicitor requesting transfer of funds; and what estimate he has made of the number of such scams that took place in the last three years.

Mr Shailesh Vara

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), as an independent regulator, is well aware of the risks identified by the honourable member. It regularly issues scam alerts and in July this year published a paper outlining key risks. This paper will be updated again next spring. The SRA has advised that in 2014 it issued 183 scam alerts.