PRESS RELEASE : Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s plan to tackle fraud [May 2023]

” Fraud now accounts for over 40% of crime. It costs us nearly £7 billion a year and we know these proceeds are funding organised crime and terror. What’s more, new technologies are making these scams easier to do and harder to police.

It’s time to take the fight to the scammers and fraudsters, and put an end to these crimes which can devastate lives and livelihoods within seconds.

Today, we’re launching our new plan to tackle fraud.

This is how the new measures will affect you.

We’re going to stop scams reaching people in the first place

Modern technology has opened up new ways for criminals to bombard people with a barrage of fake calls, texts, emails and WhatsApp messages.

Here’s how we’re going to stop it:

• We will outlaw so-called “SIM farms”, technical devices that allow criminals to scam texts to thousands of people at the same time
• We will work with Ofcom to stop more cases of number ‘spoofing’, where scammers impersonate UK numbers and trick people into thinking they’re speaking to banks, telephone companies or other legitimate businesses
• We will ban cold calls on all financial products, so that anyone who receives calls trying to sell them products such as crypto currency schemes or insurance will know it’s a scam

We will bring more fraudsters to justice

Here’s how we’ll make sure the scammers responsible face up to their crimes:

• By launching a new National Fraud Squad led by the National Crime Agency and the City of London Police – backed by 400 new posts
• We’ll step up work with international partners and make greater use of the UK’s intelligence community to identify and disrupt more fraudsters overseas

We will empower people to better protect themselves

We know that often when you fall victim to a scam, people feel upset, panicked, or embarrassed about being caught out, or worried about whether they’ll ever get their money back.

Here’s how we’ll help protect you:

• By investing £30 million in a state-of-the-art reporting centre which will be up and running in the year
• We’re also working with tech companies to make it as simple as possible to report fraud online. Regardless of which social media platform you are on, you should be able to find the ‘report’ button within a single click
• Looking at giving banks more time to process payments, to allow suspicious payments to be investigated and stopping people from falling victim to fraudsters

Our plan will help protect you and your loved ones from these scams and the predators who perpetrate them. The time has come to put the fraudsters out of business. And that’s what I’m determined to do.”

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak