Labour reveals Government failing on fraud in every region of England and Wales

- Almost a million reports to Action Fraud in 30 months to September 2021 but only 1.2% led to a charge.

- Fraud referrals to local police rose by a quarter in first year of pandemic, but charges fell by a quarter.

- The rate of Action Fraud referrals leading to a charge exactly halved from 2019/20 to 2021/22.

Ahead of May’s local elections, the Labour Party has published new figures revealing that government enforcement against online and telephone fraudsters has fallen in every region of England and Wales, even while the level of reported fraud has soared to new record highs.

Reports of fraud and cybercrime to the UK’s national reporting centre, Action Fraud, have risen every year since 2015/16, with 971,104 reported cases in England and Wales in the last ten quarters for which figures are available, from the start of 2019/20 up to the end of September 2021.

But just 11,692 (1.2%) of those reports to Action Fraud have led to charges, and Labour’s new data reveals a declining pattern of enforcement throughout the country.

A total of almost 100,000 cases were referred from Action Fraud to individual police forces in England and Wales in the last ten quarters. These were the cases where it was considered most likely that further investigations by local police would lead to a suspect in the area being identified and charged. 

Those referrals rose by more than a quarter from 2019/20 (33,699) to 2020/21 (42,584), as reports of online fraud soared in the first year of the pandemic. But despite that increase, the number of charges resulting from referrals fell by more than a quarter, from 5,318 in 2019/20 to 3,948 in 2020/21.

That pattern of decline continued into the second year of the pandemic, with charges resulting from referrals falling from 1,329 per quarter in 2019/20 to 987 in 2020/21, and just 915 in the first half of 2021/22, a reduction of more than 31 per cent over the course of 30 months.

Most worrying of all, the percentage of referred cases resulting in charges has exactly halved over the past three years, from 15.78% in 2019/20 to 9.27% in 2020/21 and just 7.89% in 2021/22.

That decline in the overall charge rate for Action Fraud referrals has been seen in every Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) area in England and Wales. In 2019/20, only three of the 13 CPS areas had a charge rate below 10%, but in the first half of 2021/22, only four areas had a charge rate above 10%.

Charge rates below the national average in 2021/22 were seen in the North West and Wessex (both 5.2%), the West Midlands (5.8%), the East Midlands (6.2%), Thames and Chiltern (6.6%), London (6.8%), Yorkshire and Humberside (7.2%), the South West (7.5%) and South East (7.8%). The highest charge rate was in Wales (24%), but this was still sharply down on the rate in 2019/20 (72.9%).

In terms of absolute numbers, every CPS area has seen their volume of quarterly referrals from Action Fraud increase since 2019/20, but 11 out of the 13 areas have seen their number of resulting charges decline. The only exceptions were the Thames and Chiltern region, and the East of England.

Emily Thornberry MP, Labour’s Shadow Attorney General, said:

“In the last two years, we have seen an unprecedented assault by online and telephone fraudsters on our national prosperity and the personal financial security of millions of households. Throughout the country, working men and women have been robbed of their hard-earned wages, and pensioners have been scammed out of their life savings, as fraud has become the UK’s most common crime.

“In response, the government has told us fraud is not a crime that people experience in their day-to-day lives, they have failed to match the surge in online fraud with a surge in dedicated police resources, and their own counter-fraud minister has quit because he said his colleagues appeared to have no knowledge and little interest in the consequences of fraud on our economy and society.

“Now the results of that apathy are laid bare in these new figures. Instead of launching a nationwide crack-down on the parasites stealing money from our bank accounts, the government has shrugged its shoulders and allowed thousands of them to go unpunished. Only a Labour government will give the fight against fraud the priority it deserves, and stand up for prosperity and security.” 

Ends

Notes for Editors

Action Fraud was established in 2009 as the national reporting centre for members of the public and businesses who have been the victims or targets of fraud. The number of reports in England and Wales increased from 220,662 in 2015/16 to 261,943 in 2016/17, 277,033 in 2017/18, 311,086 in 2018/19 and 338,250 in 2019/20, before rising sharply to 428,489 in 2020/21 as fraud surged in the first year of the pandemic. In the first half of 2021/22, the latest figures available, Action Fraud received 204,365 reports.

The reports that Action Fraud receive are analysed by a central investigation team, which then refers individual cases to local police and CPS areas where there is the strongest chance of further investigation leading to the arrest and charging of suspects. The table below shows the number of referrals to each CPS area in England and Wales since 2019/20, and the number and rate of cases that led to charges, based on data obtained from Freedom of Information requests by Emily Thornberry.

It should be noted that the figures below for 2021/22 are for the six months to September 2021 (covering Q1 and Q2), the latest data available. It should also be noted that, due to an oddity in the way the CPS records its data, charges for forgery are included alongside charges for fraud, meaning that – if anything – the figures below slightly overstate the number of charges resulting from Action Fraud referrals.

¹  Six months to September 2021 (Q1 and Q2 inclusive).

²  This anomalous figure reflects the inclusion of forgery charges in the CPS figures, as explained above.               

The total number of charges in the table above is 11,096. In addition, over the same period, there were 596 charges resulting from reports to Action Fraud that were investigated centrally and processed by a CPS central casework team. The combined total of 11,692 charges compared to the 971,104 reports to Action Fraud in England and Wales from Q1 2019/20 to Q2 2021/22 gives an overall charge rate of 1.2%.