(Bromley and Chislehurst)
(Con):...Having spoken about those large-scale matters, I hope
that we will not forget that there is a great deal of
“small-scale” fraud—small-scale in the global picture, that is,
but very big and important to the victims of fraud. The Justice
Committee recently conducted a number of hearings on fraud in the
justice system. The message of the evidence we heard from Victim
Support was “Do not think that fraud is a victimless crime, which
is all too easy to do”. That view was supported by
the Association of
Police and Crime Commissioners which reported that
some 74% of fraud victims were emotionally impacted by the crime.
At the very least, someone will feel that they have been made an
idiot of; more often, they will have lost what may be a small sum
of money for a bank, but is a lot of money to them. They will
feel vulnerable thereafter, almost betrayed. So this is not a
victimless crime, and we should never allow it to be thought to
be so. This is coming from the people who have been talked to
because they have reported the offence of fraud. There are
estimated to be 3.7 million incidents of fraud but according to
Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue
services, the majority of them are not reported. We need to do a
lot more on that everyday fraud...
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