Source · Select Committees · Treasury Committee
Recommendation 23
23
Acknowledged
Paragraph: 125
There may be scope for the Government to consider whether the FCA should be given...
Conclusion
There may be scope for the Government to consider whether the FCA should be given more powers to enable it to investigate fraud and financial crime. We will continue to consider this as part of our Economic Crime inquiry.
Government response summary AI-generated
The government states its serious commitment to tackling fraud through cross-government work and the Home Office's upcoming Fraud Action Plan, which will consider potential legislative or regulatory changes.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Paragraph Reference:
125
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government · verbatim extract
Acknowledged
We appreciate that these are difficult issues. With police forces now spending less than 1% of its resources on fraud investigations when, according to Action Fraud, fraud accounts for 1 in 3 crimes, we can understand the desire to look to regulators for a greater contribution. There are, of course, no easy answers. For instance, reconfiguring the FCA to prosecute serious and/or volume frauds would involve major up-front investment and significant time to operationalise, and would require an ongoing source of funding. Such reconfiguration may also lead to a wider rebalancing of resources, in the form of causing the FCA to devote additional resource to prosecuting wrongdoing, some of which may have limited direct relevance to our role as regulator of the financial services industry, when those resources could have greater impact through prioritising measures which protect consumers of financial services, and prevent fraud by authorised firms. We value the work of the Committee through its Economic Crime inquiry, and will respond to the final report. In the meantime, to the extent it may assist, the Committee will be aware that Mark Steward explained the limitations on the FCA’s investigation and prosecution powers in respect of fraud offences in his letter to the Chair dated 14 July 2021.
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