Recent attacks on our Jewish communities are completely unacceptable. An attack on our Jewish community is an attack on us all, and we must take the safety of our Jewish community very seriously. Jewish people must feel safe and Government will strain every sinew to ensure that is the case.
The rise in antisemitism is a scourge on our society. In the year to March 2025, there were 2,873 religious hate crimes against Jewish people—106 per 10,000 of population—the highest proportion for any group by some distance. In the Community Security Trust’s recent antisemitic incidents report, for the first time ever, the CST recorded over 200 cases of anti-Jewish hate in every calendar month in 2025. Shockingly, the CST also found that the terror attacks in Heaton Park and Bondi Beach triggered immediate spikes in antisemitism, ranging from face-to-face taunting to antisemitic social media posts. The Government have heard loud and clear the experiences of Jewish people in our communities in recent weeks and months.
While tackling this hatred requires a whole of Government response and a whole of society response, the police have an important role to play. This Government have already invested an additional £25 million into policing patrols and protective security to support Jewish communities.
I can also confirm today that we are providing additional funding of £251.1 million for the police to tackle antisemitism in our communities over the next three years. Alongside the investment in protective security, this brings total funding for protecting Jewish communities to £309.5 million.
This will fund:
a recognisable, permanent policing presence in key Jewish communities across the country;
a national surge capacity to ensure all Jewish communities, wherever they live, can be protected;
stronger national co-ordination and specialised capabilities to deliver a consistent approach, with specified funding to deliver antisemitism training for all police officers in England and Wales and a centralised online hate crime investigations hub; and
additional protective security and other capabilities to be deployed by Counter Terrorism Policing, in recognition of the threat from state actors and proxies to Jewish communities.
The majority of British Jews in England and Wales live in London, which has the highest concentration of synagogues and Jewish schools in the country, and this community has faced significant threat in recent months. We are therefore providing £85.8 million to the Metropolitan Police Service to fund around 300 officers to support increased policing in Jewish communities. They will increase specialised capabilities, strengthen intelligence, investigative and co-ordination functions, all of which will allow for better operational deployment in response to specific threats. This is in addition to the £18 million uplift the Government announced in April.
Independent Review of Disclosure and Fraud Offences: Part Two
My noble Friend the Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint), has today made the following written ministerial statement:
I am pleased to inform the House that the Home Office is today publishing Jonathan Fisher KC’s second and final report from the independent review of disclosure and fraud offences, Fraud in the Digital Age. The report examines the effectiveness of the current fraud framework and the barriers that inhibit the detection, investigation and prosecution of fraud committed against individuals and businesses.
I would like to record my thanks to Jonathan Fisher KC for this significant and authoritative contribution, and for his sustained leadership of the review across both phases. This includes his earlier report, Disclosure in the Digital Age, to which the Government has responded.
Together, the two reports reflect extensive engagement across the criminal justice system, law enforcement, regulatory bodies, academia and the private sector, and provide a comprehensive assessment of how fraud is now perpetrated and how the system should respond.
Independent Review of Disclosure and Fraud Offences: Government Response to Part One
Today the Government publishes “Modernising the Criminal Disclosure Regime”, setting out our response to recommendations made by the independent review of disclosure and fraud offences and the independent review of the criminal courts on the operation of the criminal disclosure regime.
We are grateful to Jonathan Fisher KC for his thorough independent review of disclosure and fraud offences which has been published in two parts. This Government response refers to part one of his independent review: “Disclosure in the Digital Age”. The Government response to part two on fraud offences will be published in due course.
Disclosure is a statutory regime that applies to all criminal proceedings in England and Wales and is central to the right to a fair trial. It governs how material gathered in criminal investigations is recorded, reviewed, retained and shared, ensuring that relevant material capable of assisting the defence or undermining the prosecution is identified and disclosed.
Part one of this review reflects extensive engagement across the system and offers a practical package to raise standards, embracing appropriate technology, strengthening case management with an intensive disclosure regime for the most complex cases, and consolidating guidance and learning so that good practice is embedded consistently.
We also thank Sir Brian Leveson for his work on the independent review of the criminal courts, which included proposals related to disclosure, set out in chapter 5 of part 2 of his independent review. Our response considers Sir Brian Leveson’s proposals, alongside Jonathan Fisher KC’s proposals, which have enabled the Government to evaluate and implement disclosure reform collectively, drawing on the findings of both reviews. The Government’s full response to Sir Brian’s independent review of the criminal courts will be published separately in due course.
A further £65.9 million will go to forces outside of London with a significant Jewish population to provide a permanent presence in Jewish communities and ensure they are equipped to provide the communities with the support they need. Of this funding, £22.5 million will be provided to Greater Manchester Police to sustain the increase in policing presence in response to the tragic attack in Heaton Park last year. The £43.4 million will be distributed across seven other forces with significant Jewish communities: Hertfordshire, Essex, Northumbria, Sussex, Thames Valley, West Midlands and West Yorkshire.
In recognition of the need to ensure consistency of policing responses to antisemitism across England and Wales, £40.8 million will be provided to support national policing co-ordination and capabilities. Jewish people and communities should feel confident that antisemitic crimes will face the full force of the law wherever they live. We will fund antisemitism training for officers in England and Wales and ensure surge resources are available to all forces to protect Jewish communities, during events or times of increased threat. This is in addition to the £2 million uplift the Government announced in April.
Finally, Counter Terrorism Policing will receive a further £58.6 million over the three-year period to provide further security to vulnerable communities, places and people.
Our Jewish community is an integral part of this country. To be antisemitic is to be anti-British. We will continue to do everything in our power to protect Jewish people, communities and places, and to bring those who seek to cause them harm to justice. This additional funding aims to establish a sustained police presence in Jewish communities, provide a national response to the threat of antisemitism, and most importantly reassure Jewish communities across the country at a time of great fear and concern.
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This second report lays bare the scale and seriousness of the challenge. Fraud now accounts for nearly half of all surveyed crime, making it the most prevalent offence faced by the public, including businesses. It is not a victimless or technical crime: it strikes directly at personal autonomy, causes profound emotional harm to victims, imposes significant costs on businesses and the wider economy, undermines public trust, and poses a growing threat to our national security and economic resilience.
The report identifies a set of structural and systemic factors that have allowed fraud to proliferate. It describes an age-old crime that has been supercharged by digital technology: offenders can operate at scale, at distance and across borders; and the likelihood of detection and prosecution remains low. Lengthy investigations, the growing complexity of digital material, limited specialist capability and fragmented responsibilities have combined to weaken deterrence and to create the perception among criminals that fraud is a low-risk, high-reward activity. The report is clear that the Government must match criminals’ innovation with their own.
Against that backdrop, the report emphasises that enforcement alone will not be sufficient. It makes 47 recommendations which collectively argue for a decisive shift in posture: from a system that is predominantly reactive and post-harm, to one that is proactive, disruptive and preventative. The recommendations are grouped around strengthening upstream disruption; improving public-private partnership and data sharing; increasing corporate accountability; responding to emerging technologies; and ensuring that consequences for fraud and fraud-enabling conduct are swifter, more certain and more visible, in order to increase deterrence and reinforce public confidence.
As set out in the Government’s fraud strategy 2026-29, we are already strengthening the tools available to disrupt fraud earlier and at scale, including through the exploration of civil penalties and international sanctions against high-harm overseas fraud actors. We are expanding international co-operation, sponsoring the Global Fraud summit 2026, to tackle fraud as a transnational threat.
Alongside this, through the Online Safety Act 2023, we are ensuring that tech companies are responsible for preventing fraudulent content and adverts from appearing on their platforms. We are deepening public-private partnerships by launching the online crime centre to disrupt online and volume cyber-fraud at scale, and to make the UK a harder place for criminals to commit fraud.
We are also working to improve the sharing and use of economic crime data, including through a recent call for evidence, and will consider the effectiveness of whistleblower incentivisation as part of the Government’s broader approach to strengthening the detection, prevention and enforcement of economic crime. Trusted reporting channels can play a vital role in surfacing information on fraud, corruption, sanctions evasion and other illicit activity, enabling earlier intervention and more effective disruption.
The report’s recommendations cut across the responsibilities of multiple departments, agencies and sectors. The Government will now consider them carefully and will respond in due course.
Tackling fraud requires sustained collaboration between Government, law enforcement, regulators, industry and civil society. This Government are determined to build momentum in the fight against fraud: to support victims, to pursue those who profit from deception, to strengthen deterrence, and to make the UK a safer place to live, work and do business.
The report is being presented to Parliament today as a Command Paper (CP 1600) and will be available on gov.uk.
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The Government response to these recommendations sets out how we will improve the disclosure regime while preserving its core legal safeguards. In summary, it supports the responsible and transparent use of advanced technology to manage large volumes of material more efficiently; strengthens learning, training and consistency across law enforcement and prosecutors; and considers improved court processes, including exploring a pilot of the proposed intensive disclosure regime to support earlier, more focused engagement between the prosecution and defence in the most serious and complex cases.
Taken together, these measures are designed to reduce unnecessary administrative burden on police and prosecutors, improve the speed and accuracy of disclosure, support victims, and uphold the right to a fair trial. This will deliver a disclosure regime that is transparent, modern and fit for the future.
This response has been developed jointly with the Ministry of Justice, owners of the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996 and its code of practice, and the Attorney General’s Office, which owns the Attorney General’s guidelines on disclosure. I am very grateful to the Solicitor General, the Courts Minister and officials across all three Departments for their close collaboration in producing a coherent, system-wide response.
The response is being presented to Parliament today as a Command Paper (CP 1601) and will be available on gov.uk.