Each year, more people fall victim to scams and the scammers become increasingly sophisticated in order to con more people. According to the crime survey for England and Wales, fraud and computer misuse crimes were the most common crime experienced by individuals last year. Action Fraud, the police body set up to co-ordinate information on cyber crime and fraud, saw a 28 per cent increase in card and bank account fraud in the past 12 months. The crime survey for England and Wales's findings suggest that less than one in five incidents of fraud are reported to the police and Action Fraud.

Unfortunately, once someone has fallen victim to the fraudsters, their details, including personal details and passwords, are added to suckers' lists, sold on to other criminals. According to estimates by the Chartered Trading Standards Institute there could be 0.5 million UK residents on these lists. One victim’s details were sold on over 200 times—200 scam groups and organised criminals targeting just one individual.

Three-quarters of adults living in the UK have been targeted by a scam in the last two years. They range in sophistication from a poorly worded e-mail from a foreign prince offering vast wealth to highly targeted social engineering based on your online profile. My office has spent the last couple of weeks apologising to people around the UK who have contacted us believing that Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs are seeking their arrest for unpaid taxes. The fact that our Assembly office numbers have been spoofed to add a modicum of believability to this particular scam shows the increasing sophistication of the criminals involved.

A few weeks ago I was contacted by a constituent who has given me authority to use his name, Mr Mark Morgan of Gordon Road in Porthcawl. Mark Morgan is one of my constituents who fell for a scam. He is in his 60s but is computer literate. As he travels abroad frequently, Mark does much of his banking for various personal and business bank accounts online. When Mark was contacted by a fraudster by telephone, purporting to be from his bank regarding a fraudulent transaction on one of his online accounts, they were so convincing that Mark fell for their scam, which resulted in them draining £38,000 from his account. Around half of the money has been reimbursed by his bank, but the likelihood is that he will never see the remainder—money he can ill afford to lose; his life savings set aside for his retirement. Mark wanted me to highlight today what had happened to him in the hopes that it would stop others having to endure something similar. Sadly, Mark is not alone; cyber crime victims lose £190,000 a day.

So, what can we do to tackle this increasing menace? Raising awareness is the No.1 thing we can do, as a Government, as an institution and as individuals, because we all have a role to play in this subject. We must educate the public about the increasing range and sophistication of the scams. We must increase the number of consumer education campaigns in order to inform the public about what constitutes the different types of scam. We must send out a clear message that there is nothing, absolutely nothing, to be embarrassed about falling victim to such a crime. You wouldn't be embarrassed about admitting you were mugged, so why should falling victim to a highly skilled criminal be treated any differently?

Embarrassment is, unfortunately, a major reason why only one in five scams are being reported. People need to understand the importance of reporting scams. Not knowing about these crimes makes it more difficult for the authorities to identify and act against the scammers. It makes it more difficult to identify who is most likely to be targeted and then act to ensure that those groups are provided with relevant information on how to avoid such scams in the future.

Aside from increasing awareness, I would ask that the Welsh Government and the UK Government work together with industry to put better safeguards in place. It should not be possible for scammers to spoof telephone numbers. Government and the phone operators need to tackle this growing threat and put a stop to robocalling. These automated calls have moved on from PPI claims to encouraging people to fraudulently claim for personal injury following a car accident. We need to strengthen data protection laws to prevent the selling of personal information without explicit knowledge and consent.

Over the next two weeks, Citizens Advice are running their Scams Awareness 2019 campaign, and it is a complete coincidence that I opted to table this topic for a short debate during their campaign, but it is fortuitous. I urge all Members here to tweet their support for the campaign using the hashtag #scamaware.

Scams can affect anyone at any time, so let’s do all that we can to raise awareness, remove the stigma, increase reporting, and strengthen legislation, in order to protect our constituents and prevent others having to go through what Mark Morgan has had to endure. Diolch yn fawr. Thank you very much.