Lord Hanson global anti scams alliance speech - March 27

Can I first just welcome you all to London. For those who are here for the first time, welcome, it's a great city.

Walk around and look at the Houses the Parliament opposite. I spent 28 years as a Member of Parliament and now in the House of Lords, and it's a great privilege to be able to do this now to bring policy to government from the election of last year.

I want to thank particularly the GASA and CIFAS for organizing and for your attendance here today, both online and in the room. And, I think, particularly for those who are now at either at four o'clock in the morning or five o'clock at night.

I know that many of you have worked long and hard on the issue of fraud, and I want to today just to say thank you for doing that. But I also pay tribute to you and will try and set out some of the issues that we, as a new government, are trying to look at on the issue of fraud.

Today sees the start of this critical summit, and I wish you well in that.

The Home Office, in which I'm a proud Minister, has been pleased to support this conference today and the ongoing work that you're doing. And I will outline in a moment, some of the things that we want your help and support on, in due course.

With the many partners that are in the room today, we share common key objectives.

And I was particularly keen to see some of the challenges that were put on the screen a moment ago, because those key common objectives are complex and are vital to our society as a whole.

We have to reduce the level of scams and fraud. Reduce it and stop its growth in areas that have yet to be determined downstream.

We need to, as has been said by colleagues here this morning, hold criminals to account for their actions, pursue them relentlessly, and make sure that we get criminal justice outcomes for the victims of these crimes.

We need bring together government, who can coordinate, who can legislate, who can take action, but also bring together the law enforcement agencies, and I'm pleased to see colleagues from the National Crime Agency here today, bring together businesses, bring together financial providers, to both share the knowledge, share the support, but devise a long term plan to both tackle the levels of fraud now, but also to anticipate what's coming downstream.

And it's important because we have victims. It's important because it's criminals who are profiting and taking money out of our economies.

But it's also important to support economic growth and to give confidence to the public in online activities, because the money that is lost to fraud is money that is going into other criminal activities, funding other criminal objectives, and is not being used by either nation states, by businesses, or indeed, by individuals to grow their economy and improve their own personal standing.

So, I'm pleased to be here to say to you that the UK Government stands ready to play its part in supporting these objectives with you today, and to play its part in encouraging other nations to play their part. Because I'm acutely aware, and it was said a moment ago, this is not a victimless crime.

The people who are victims of this crime are individuals who believe they have a loved one on the line or who are passing money for a service they don't receive. Businesses  that are being scammed out of millions of pounds, governments being defrauded by individuals and by criminal gangs.

This is not a victimless crime, and, as was said by colleagues earlier, it is not two people in a shed in a small town in North Wales where I live, or in Liverpool where I grew up. It is international criminals who are not robbing banks anymore, because that's dangerous and they will be caught. They're doing things like this, which needs to be tackled by us. So today, as was mentioned, I address you as the first UK Fraud Minister, and that, I hope, shows the priority that this UK Government has given to fraud.

The Prime Minister and the Home Secretary at the election last year made clear pledges to improve the performance of the government on fraud issues, and one of those was to allocate myself as part of my roles in the Home Office to be the UK's first Fraud Minister, to ensure that we tackle fraud, develop a strategy and make sure that we encourage and support and work with partners on the ideas that you have in this room to help make a difference downstream.

Because make no mistake, the challenge that we saw on screen a moment ago is very clear. Fraud is a growing, significant transnational threat. It harms businesses, individuals and national security. 70% of fraud has an international element, and it is growing in a multinational way, exploiting telecoms and emerging technologies like AI.

In the UK there were 3.2 million victims just in England and Wales last year. Detection rates, as shown on the screen, are not good enough.

Criminals are moving fast. And being criminals, they don't obey the rules that we obey. They don't do the things that we do. They don't worry about the regulations that we're putting in place. They don't think about what we're going to do in AI in the future. They do things that are flexible, quick, they move, and we need to be ahead of them.

So, we in the UK have now to develop a new Fraud Strategy. I just want to give you some tasters of what we're thinking and how we can work with you on those issues.

We need a robust response, and therefore our expanded Fraud Strategy is designed to drive collaboration and to meet some of our key manifesto commitments.

And I hope that when I outline it to you today, we're not being critical of what's gone on before. When we came to office in July last year, we looked at the existing UK fraud strategy. We determined to see it through for its two year life, which ends about now.

But we decided that we wanted to beef up that strategy and look at how we can, for a three-year period, from 2026 to 2029, put some policies in place that will help support the work you're doing.

And that expanded Fraud Strategy has really six key components for us as a UK Government.

First of all, the question of data, and I'll come back to that in a moment. Secondly, the question of tech companies and telecoms companies, and I'll come back to that again in a moment. Thirdly, the key issue of international cooperation. Fourthly, fraud against business and the growth agenda as a whole. Fifthly, public awareness. Sixthly, the evolving threat, including benefits for us of AI, but also the challenge of criminal usage of AI.

And, finally, the thread that runs through this, all which is the issue of holding people to account and exercising criminal justice actions to make sure that we can up that performance that you've seen on screen earlier.

We're going to be holding engagements in the UK, to which any organization here today is welcome to participate during the course of this late Spring on those key issues through a series of workshops that we're doing, hosted by my Home Office colleagues who are here today.

But what does that mean? Those six issues are really important - you will know and recognize them.

But we are looking for your ideas, cooperation and support to improve performance in those areas. Number one: data sharing. How do we better share data? What are the regulations in the UK context, but also internationally, that we need to examine to improve performance on data sharing, both at home and abroad, a key issue.

Between us, we know a lot of scams and a lot of criminals that can trace a lot of victims.

How do we share that experience in a better way? And what are the barriers that the UK Government can help support to lift to make that a better process.

With our tech and telecom companies, you are doing great work in supporting the reduction of scams. But my challenge again is, what more can we do to ensure that the platforms that are operated on have support from everyone in this room, to track down those scammers and to make sure we prevent and build-in and design-in that performance to reduce scams and to ensure greater confidence.

Because, when I was a little boy, I walked down the high street and bought things. But if I'm not there with the confidence to do that online, that potential growth market, which is absolutely mammoth in the world, will not be there.

Thirdly, international cooperation. That picture on screen earlier showed us that this is a world criminal organization activity. And in order to tackle that, we need to work with partners, to look at where there are specific challenges in specific countries, not from the governments, but within those countries, and to look at how we can work with our international partners in Europe and across the world, to put in place international activity, of which the UK Government is pleased to try to be a leader in this field.

We're trying to reset our relationship with Europe. We've got colleagues in the Americas. We've got great examples of work in Southeast Asia and Australia. We need to look at how we can harness that, at the government level, to support the work that you're doing.

But it's really important that we do look at reducing the cost to businesses, reducing the level of scams and ensuring that we have growing confidence in the online market.

And of course, in all of this, if any of us have been scammed, and I'll put my hand up, I have been on occasions, and almost certainly everybody in this room would have seen a scam at a local level. How do we ensure that the consumer, the citizen, the people that we represent in government, are better protected and understands some of those emerging threats and has that information to hand?

It is not the citizen's fault that they are scammed. But we need to ensure we can lift that level of knowledge. And we have a very good online and public awareness campaign running currently, but in our strategy over the next few years, how do we beef that up?

And what are the key messages that government, businesses, financial institutions can give?

And finally, the big issue for us is: how do we use AI to perform better?

Hands up, I know almost nothing about how AI works. But I know that we can use it to both identify and understand how scams are working, and to be able to use AI to identify trends, issues and other things.

I don't how it's done but I know we can do it. And I know the policy outcomes are there, but I also know that there's somebody out there in this world looking at how they can use AI in one, two, three or four years time, to develop new scams.

And, my challenge again to you, as the collective community is: what do we need to do to better utilise AI to prevent and build in protection?

But, secondly, what's coming downstream that we don't know about? And how can we make sure that in four years time, when the criminals do something, we are in three years time ahead of them on those issues. That is really, really important.

Fraudsters are going to operate across multiple sectors, private and public. Partnership is essential - that's why it's not solely a government issue – it's a partnership issue, between us all.

As was mentioned, 40% - 50% of crimes in the UK are fraud related. If we want to reduce crime as a UK government, that is the area where the Prime Minister knows we want to do that. So, we have to continue to work together to develop measures that will make sure that we do that.

And our officials who are here today, and will be here over the next few days, are about helping you to look at those particular challenges, using data, using partnerships to degrade the online threat, and the work that is done by the organizations sponsoring today's conference through the Global Signals Exchange is really, really important.

But I welcome your further contribution, and those six or so areas are outlined, if you have thoughts on our strategy, which we're developing now in this eight-to-nine month period, then I welcome them.

Officials are in attendance but, also, you can email us at fraud.strategy@homeoffice.gov.uk and we'll make sure that's distributed during the course of today.

We're looking at ideas as to what we need to do, and international action is particularly important. And this fraud summit is extremely important, because, as has been said, fraudsters do not respect borders.

They target victims indiscriminately. No single country or sector can tackle this alone, and strong, decisive international action is needed now.

We've made some significant progress, and the work that you're doing here is equally significant.

The UK has played a role in securing the first ever UN resolution on fraud, a landmark agreement setting global standards for all member states. But we have to maintain this international momentum and build on those successes.

So today I can announce, and I'm pleased to announce, that the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and INTERPOL will host jointly the next Global Fraud Summit in 2026 and which the UK will be supporting by significant funding to make sure that we can pull together some further action on those issues.

We want to make global fraud a priority. We want to bring together government, law enforcement, the private sector and civil society, and we want to ensure that summit will build a coalition to take decisive action against fraudsters.

The Summit has a number of key objectives. I think it's really important that political representatives of governments, like myself, stand up and say - this is not acceptable anymore. This needs political leadership as well as business and other leadership, and that's why, as the first Faud Minister for the UK, with the Prime Minister's support, I'm pleased to do that.

We need to secure a global public-private agreement to effectively block fraud from reaching citizens. We need to ensure that we improve that global understanding of the scale and nature of the threat, but also the emerging threats.

We need to strengthen international cooperation in the areas where we can do so. And we need to ensure that we secure support for global law enforcement operations and training to target fraudsters perpetrating this crime more effectively.

So, this week, the work you're doing is key.

It is really important, and I hope we can share ideas. I hope we can look at innovation. I hope we can look at long term policy, and I hope we can look particularly at how the United Kingdom can be involved in energizing a refreshed strategy for us in the UK, but also step up to play our part in helping to support other countries, to energize their efforts on this area, as a whole.

This is a challenge for us all. It's never going to be easy. It's not going to be something we can fully resolve.

But I think we have a responsibility, in all of our sectors, to step up to that plate and to make sure that we work on strong international cooperation, cross sector cooperation, and also build connections like you're doing today, both online and in person.

And let's just put the last thought with the victim.

There will be victims today, whose lives, whose confidence, whose businesses and whose future opportunities will be destroyed by people who do not care what the impact of those crimes are.

We have a duty to try to stop and prevent that.

We may not succeed every day, but we have a duty to look at the challenges, to provide the support, and to make sure as governments and other sectors, we do that.

So, I wanted to come here today, to introduce this conference, to welcome this conference, to give this conference the blessing of the United Kingdom Government, to wish you well and to say that we are open to suggestions.

Because I don't know what you know. You know what you know. You know what the issues are. You know what we can do.

And although we can't always promise finance, we can't always promise legislation, we can't always promise coordination, what we can do is to try to do our best in each of those areas, and that's what this UK government will do.

And I look forward to working with you all as partners in the development of our strategy, but also in looking back in a few years at the impact and what we've achieved.

Thank you.