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<p><del class="ministerial">The Government’s Joint Fraud Taskforce (a coalition between
government, industry, law enforcement and the third sector) continues to lead an ambitious
programme of work to design out and prevent fraud that occurs both online and offline.
This includes the<em>Take Five</em> fraud awareness campaign, designed to urge the
public and businesses to take time to consider whether a situation they find themselves
in is genuine.</del></p><p><del class="ministerial">Online personal scams are increasingly
perpetrated via cyber-enabled methods. To protect victims, the Government set up the
National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) in October 2016. The NCSC is the UK’s technical
authority on cyber security and provides a single, central body for cyber security
at a national level. The NCSC works very closely with law enforcement agencies and
the intelligence community to help prevent, disrupt and investigate cyber-crime and
other online cyber related threats. In 2018 the NCSC took down 22,133 phishing campaigns,
including 14,124 UK government-related phishing sites, and the total number of takedowns
of fraudulent websites was 192,256, across 2018, with 64% of them down in 24 hours.</del></p><p><ins
class="ministerial">The City of London Police undertake a national lead force role
for the investigation of serious and complex fraud cases. The Home Office remains
committed to improving the law enforcement response to fraud. That is why we requested
that Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS)
conduct a thematic inspection on fraud, including Action Fraud, and set out measures
for improving the response to fraud in our Economic Crime Plan, which was published
in July. The City of London Police (as the National Lead Force for fraud) is currently
implementing recommendations within HMICFRS’ inspection report, which was published
on 2<sup>nd</sup> April.</ins></p><p><ins class="ministerial">The scale and complexity
of the threat from serious and organised crime means that we need to do more to develop
our response. The Government therefore recently announced a formal review to identify
the powers, capabilities, governance and funding needed in response to this threat.</ins></p>
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