It has not proved possible to respond to the Hon Member in the time available before Prorogation.

Since September 2016, the Government has been running the Take Five fraud awareness campaign designed to urge the public and businesses to take time to consider whether a situation they find themselves in is genuine. The campaign equips the public to more confidently challenge fraudulent approaches – be they face-to-face, on the telephone or online. Specific advice on phone scams and vishing can be found at www.takefive-stopfraud.org.uk.

The Take Five campaign has been jointly led by HMG and UK Finance and involved influential public, private and third sector partners, including Age UK, National Trading Standards (Friends Against Scams initiative), Neighbourhood Watch, banks and law enforcement to deliver protective messages to people who are most vulnerable to fraud, including the elderly. The campaign has been run nationally across digital and social media, radio and video on demand platforms, and included media partnerships with publications such as Women’s Weekly, Ideal Home and Take a Break and presenter-led spots on radio stations like LBC and Heart, seeking to embed behavioural change amongst the target audience.

In addition to this campaign activity, the Government continues to work on practical solutions to address nuisance and scam calls. DCMS secured over £600k in the Autumn Budget to provide vulnerable people with call blocking devices. This was in addition to £500K secured for the same purpose in the previous spending review period. This funding has helped to protect some of the most vulnerable in society from nuisance calls and scams, including those originating from overseas. The Government has also taken action to ban pensions cold calling, recognising that it is the most common method used to initiate pension fraud, which can leave people facing retirement with a greatly reduced income

The new process for advances and identification introduced on the 18 September 2019 mean that the level of UC advances fraud will be mitigated. Where an individual is a victim of fraud and received no money personally, no claim will be made against them. However, it is often not possible to ascertain the facts without an Interview Under Caution. The powers for an Interview Under Caution are under the Social Security Administration Act 1992, Part VI, governs this process and has been followed by successive governments of different political persuasions.

DWP will ask, and allow the individual to have the opportunity to respond to any evidence in a voluntary Interview Under Caution.

DWP follows the guidance laid down in the Criminal Procedures and Investigations Act 1996 and the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (Code C 2014) to afford the claimant all appropriate protection in law.

The Government’s Joint Fraud Taskforce (a coalition between government, industry, law enforcement and the third sector) continues to lead an ambitious programme of work to design out and prevent fraud that occurs both online and offline. This includes theTake Five fraud awareness campaign, designed to urge the public and businesses to take time to consider whether a situation they find themselves in is genuine.

Online personal scams are increasingly perpetrated via cyber-enabled methods. To protect victims, the Government set up the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) in October 2016. The NCSC is the UK’s technical authority on cyber security and provides a single, central body for cyber security at a national level. The NCSC works very closely with law enforcement agencies and the intelligence community to help prevent, disrupt and investigate cyber-crime and other online cyber related threats. In 2018 the NCSC took down 22,133 phishing campaigns, including 14,124 UK government-related phishing sites, and the total number of takedowns of fraudulent websites was 192,256, across 2018, with 64% of them down in 24 hours.

291218: All reports submitted to Action Fraud are subject to risk assessments, which take into account the following:

• Vulnerability of the victim(s)
• Priority crime types i.e. those assessed as the highest harm across multiple categories
• Financial harm of individual or linked cases
• Lines of inquiry for investigations on suspect information or identifiers, i.e. account information, email addresses, telephone numbers, websites
• Crime or not under Home Office Counting Rules
• Other risk indicators through an assessment of key words which vary over time
• Links with other reports of similar offences

291223: Action Fraud is working in conjunction with Victim Support in London to identify vulnerable victims and provide them with additional advice and support to stop them becoming repeat victims.

• All forces receive details of victims in their area each week, which enables them to deliver victim support and provide advice and guidance on crime prevention
• Particularly high risk reports with victim care needs are prioritised and sent to forces for further action
• The National Economic Crime Victim Care Unit (NECVCU) pilot delivers victim care for victims whose cases have not been referred to a local police force for investigation, covering specific force areas: City of London Police, Metropolitan Police, Nottinghamshire, West Midlands, Kent and Greater Manchester.
• NFIB Protect Alerts are issued to the public and local neighbourhood policing teams based on reporting trends and intelligence
• NFIB disrupts websites, emails and telephone numbers reportedly engaged in fraud to prevent further offending

NFIB’s Project Recall alerts banks when reports of recent fraudulent transactions are made, which often results in payments being stopped or returned to the victim.

Action Fraud is the national reporting point for fraud and cyber crime. Since April 2013, it has taken reports of these crimes on behalf of all police forces in England and Wales. Once Action Fraud has received a crime report, that information is considered by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB). Where there is enough evidence available and a viable lead, actionable intelligence packages are created and sent to the appropriate police force to consider whether enforcement activity should take place. Neither Action Fraud nor the NFIB are investigatory agencies. It is still for local forces to consider enforcement activity. Both Action Fraud and the NFIB are run by the City of London Police, which is the national lead force for fraud.

291218: All reports submitted to Action Fraud are subject to risk assessments, which take into account the following:

• Vulnerability of the victim(s)
• Priority crime types i.e. those assessed as the highest harm across multiple categories
• Financial harm of individual or linked cases
• Lines of inquiry for investigations on suspect information or identifiers, i.e. account information, email addresses, telephone numbers, websites
• Crime or not under Home Office Counting Rules
• Other risk indicators through an assessment of key words which vary over time
• Links with other reports of similar offences

291223: Action Fraud is working in conjunction with Victim Support in London to identify vulnerable victims and provide them with additional advice and support to stop them becoming repeat victims.

• All forces receive details of victims in their area each week, which enables them to deliver victim support and provide advice and guidance on crime prevention
• Particularly high risk reports with victim care needs are prioritised and sent to forces for further action
• The National Economic Crime Victim Care Unit (NECVCU) pilot delivers victim care for victims whose cases have not been referred to a local police force for investigation, covering specific force areas: City of London Police, Metropolitan Police, Nottinghamshire, West Midlands, Kent and Greater Manchester.
• NFIB Protect Alerts are issued to the public and local neighbourhood policing teams based on reporting trends and intelligence
• NFIB disrupts websites, emails and telephone numbers reportedly engaged in fraud to prevent further offending

NFIB’s Project Recall alerts banks when reports of recent fraudulent transactions are made, which often results in payments being stopped or returned to the victim.

Action Fraud is the national reporting point for fraud and cyber crime. Since April 2013, it has taken reports of these crimes on behalf of all police forces in England and Wales. Once Action Fraud has received a crime report, that information is considered by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB). Where there is enough evidence available and a viable lead, actionable intelligence packages are created and sent to the appropriate police force to consider whether enforcement activity should take place. Neither Action Fraud nor the NFIB are investigatory agencies. It is still for local forces to consider enforcement activity. Both Action Fraud and the NFIB are run by the City of London Police, which is the national lead force for fraud.

Deferred Prosecution Agreements (DPAs) have been available to prosecutors since February 2014. The SFO has agreed five DPAs with UK companies since the legislation came into force, three of which were for overseas corruption offences.

Full details of all DPAs are available on the SFO’s website at: https://www.sfo.gov.uk/publications/guidance-policy-and-protocols/deferred-prosecution-agreements/.

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has a dedicated Proceeds of Crime Division which is focused on recovering the proceeds of crime so that criminals who are successfully prosecuted by the SFO do not benefit from their offending and victims can be compensated wherever possible.

The total value of all proceeds of crime orders obtained by the SFO in each financial year since 2010, and the total value of payments made against them, can be found on the SFO website at https://www.sfo.gov.uk/about-us/.

The SFO exists to tackle the most serious and complex cases of fraud, bribery and corruption. The SFO’s remit is to investigate and, where appropriate, prosecute those cases that fall within this remit.

Please find a breakdown of Serious Fraud Office (SFO) prosecutions by case in each financial year:

Please note we interpret the prosecution of an SFO case to begin from the date of the first charge brought against an individual or organisation in a case. More information about our cases is available online at https://www.sfo.gov.uk/our-cases/.

The information you requested could only be provided by manually examining a substantial number of individual cases. The Department estimates that this would incur disproportionate costs.

Age UK has warned that the changes to eligibility for a free TV licence are likely to result in a big increase in fraudulent activity targeting vulnerable elderly people. Is that not yet one more reason why the Government should stop outsourcing their social policy and commit to keeping TV licences free for all over-75s?

The BBC has provided assurances that it will deliver the most sensitive possible handling for those who are affected and will work with older people’s groups, charities and voluntary organisations to design a bespoke system to support all those over 75 that will include new easy payment plans and an information and advice programme. We want everyone who is eligible for pension credit to make sure that they claim it, so that they get the benefit of the free TV licence.

Examination of the cases currently being progressed by the Department indicates there are 107 third-party individuals that are subject to investigation. This number is subject to change as cases progress.

At the time of submission, one 3rd party case has been referred to the Crown Prosecution Service and has been successfully prosecuted. There are a number of other cases at an advanced stage of investigation.

The Department is committed to the prevention, detection and investigation of benefit fraud. We take this issue very seriously and will continue to use appropriate penalties to deter this fraudulent behaviour.

Turning to the specific case you reference, the defendant was convicted at a Magistrates court on 14 February 2019 for fraudulently obtaining £4,152.86 in Universal Credit Advances.

This prosecution identified that the suspect had hijacked the identities of close family members in order to make fraudulent applications to Universal Credit, via the online application process, enabling fraudulent payments of Universal Credit and Universal Credit Advances.

It was established that the defendant had also impersonated a friend and changed the payment destination of his friend’s Universal Credit payments.