The government has published its long overdue National Fraud Strategy.
The West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner, Simon Foster, issued this response:
“Fraud represents close to half of all estimated crimes against individuals, but for far too long the government has been failing to prevent, tackle and reduce fraud and its national response has been in need of a fundamental overhaul.
“But the government has, sadly, been missing in action, adopted a casual, laissez-faire approach that has lacked leadership and it has been failing to get the basics right in order to deal with the level of threat we face.
“Too many victims receive a poor service and are denied justice. The investigation and prevention of fraud offences, by police forces, remains under-resourced. The West Midlands lost over 2,200 officers after 2010 and the so-called Police Uplift Programme only returned 1,200.
“Put simply, there are too few fraudsters who face justice for their crimes and I am seriously concerned the government’s new National Fraud Strategy is unlikely to do anything to significantly change that.”
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