Tory crackdown on scammers and cold callers branded 'too little, too late'
Overdue Tory plans to crackdown on "cold-hearted" fraudsters scamming people out of cash have been branded "too little, too late".
Government measures announced today include banning cold calls on all financial products and a clamp down on 'spoofing' calls used to impersonate UK phone numbers - a policy Labour called for last month.
Banks will be able to delay payments from being processed for longer to allow suspicious transactions to be investigated.
The Government will also outline plans to tackle so-called "sim farms" - devices that can be loaded with hundreds of sim cards and controlled from a computer.
Fraudsters use the mechanism to send thousands of scam texts at once.
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Six months after first proposing a new fraud "strategy" the Home Secretary Suella Braverman will on Wednesday unveil a 'National Fraud Squad', including 400 specialist investigators, to target "callous fraud cells" targeting Brits.
Rishi Sunak says 'we will take the fight to these fraudsters, wherever they try to hide' (Getty Images)The current Action Fraud service - allowing victims to report fraud - will be replaced by the end of 2023, the Government added.
The Home Office said fraud is now the most common crime in the UK - costing almost £7billion a year - with 1 in 15 people falling victim.
But Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: "Fraud is a pernicious crime that ruins the lives of millions of people across the country.
"Yet few victims ever get a police response and the Home Office has totally failed to get any grip despite the rapid growth of fraud."
She added: "This plan is too little, too late and fails to match the scale of the problem".
Labour frontbencher Emily Thornberry also highlighted the billions in Covid support schemes lost to fraud while Rishi Sunak was Chancellor.
"His pledges to take fraud seriously now are as empty as they are overdue," she said.
In a statement Rishi Sunak said: "Scammers ruin lives in seconds, deceiving people in the most despicable ways in order to line their pockets.
"We will take the fight to these fraudsters, wherever they try to hide.
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"By blocking scams at the source, boosting protections for people and bolstering enforcement, we will stop more of these cold-hearted crimes from happening in the first place and make sure justice is done".
But the Liberal Democrats described the plans as "empty promises" and branded them "too little, too late".
The party's home affairs spokesman Alistair Carmichael said: “With only one new investigator for every 9,000 cases last year, the Fraud Squad is just a drop in the ocean compared to what’s actually needed to tackle the scale of the problem.
"And these plans put even more of a burden on local police forces who are already overstretched."
The Government's new anti-fraud champion and Tory MP Anthony Browne said: "Fraud has grown to be the biggest form of crime in the UK, causing financial and emotional distress to millions of people."
He added: "The tech sector, phone companies and financial services firms must take responsibility for protecting their users by stopping fraud happening in the first place, and work together to design out fraud".
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