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.

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.