We now are moving to the short debate and I call on Caroline Jones to speak on the topic she has chosen—Caroline.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. I am pleased to move this short debate today and have agreed to allow Michelle Brown speaking time in this debate. We are facing an epidemic in Wales. The Welsh public are being targeted by ploys to swindle them out of their hard-earned money, ploys that are becoming more and more sophisticated and increasingly targeting our elderly and the most vulnerable in our society. Customers receive fake e-mails purporting to be from their bank or credit card company seeking to extract personal details and attempting to glean their passwords. Fake ads and copycat websites are set up impersonating well-known brands in order to sell fake products. People are accosted on their doorstep by others selling fake investment opportunities, shoddy goods and products they neither need or want. Families are targeted by mass mail promoting fake competitions, lotteries and goods. The postal service is also used to con people into paying for goods or services they never ordered or even received in the first place.

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.

I'd like to thank Caroline for allowing me to contribute to her debate. Scams are essentially a breach of trust. They often cause embarrassment, where a victim will almost blame themselves for falling for the scam. Raising awareness of scams will of course greatly help to reduce the unwarranted stigma of being a scam victim, as well as going some way to encouraging the public to be on their guard, but one of the key ways of raising awareness is via prosecutions, which seem to be extremely rare.

In fact, earlier this year, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services said that there's an inconsistent approach to policing fraud in England and Wales, which has left the public at high risk of scams. In April, Wayne May, founder of Scam Survivors, a website dedicated to exposing fraudsters and helping victims, told the BBC that he sympathises with police. He explained that fraudsters often operate in different countries, so although a victim could lose everything they have, it would cost more to try and investigate it. Often, victims won't report the scams, not just because of the embarrassment, but because they've read stories online where the police have told victims that there's nothing they can do.

So, where could the answer lie if detecting and bringing prosecutions is so difficult and costly? Google, Amazon, eBay, Facebook and PayPal all make huge sums of money and use sophisticated algorithms to profile people using their services. If you walk into some branches with your mobile phone in your pocket, Google will let the clerk behind the counter know which financial products you've googled recently and that they should therefore try to sell you. Of course, Google charge the banks for this service. Surely with all the monitoring Google, Amazon and the others do, they could be doing more to spot scams and those who are vulnerable to them. Perhaps we should explore forcing the big tech companies to do more, and look at holding them to account, at least in part, if one of their users falls victim to a scam. This problem largely comes about because of the online marketplace, and it seems only right that as we are rightly dealing with physical safeguarding, we should insist it is now time that those who make a fortune by putting people in contact with others online should have to take some responsibility to recover the losses of those who fall victim to scams as a result. So, I'd like to thank Caroline for bringing this debate. I fully endorse the debate—

Will you take an intervention?

No, no, no, she can't take an intervention. She's had far more than the minute she was allowed. Sorry.

Oh, all right. I'll sit down, then.

You can intervene on the Minister if you need to. Sorry. Thank you. I call on the Deputy Minister and Chief Whip to reply to the debate. Jane Hutt.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. This is an important subject, and very timely, with this year's Scam Awareness campaign starting this week. I know many Members will have been contacted by people, as Caroline Jones has and has reported—often older and vulnerable people who have been victims of scams. As you're aware, policy on stopping scams isn't devolved. Similarly, fraud of any kind is a crime and is for the police to deal with. Despite this, we are determined to do all we can to deal with issues that affect community safety in Wales and have such a huge impact on victims.

As we all know, and we've heard so clearly, scams can have a devastating impact on victims and their families. It's estimated that British consumers lose around £3.5 billion to scams every year, the equivalent of £70 for each adult living in the UK. And we've heard, of course, Citizens Advice research showing that 61 per cent of people have been targeted by scammers in the last two years. I'm also alarmed to learn through their research that nearly 40 per cent of people have been targeted five or more times. Older people, some in their 80s and 90s, are being contacted by fraudsters, demanding money or attempting to get them to transfer bank funds, as we've heard, and threatening them if they don't comply. These calls are extremely distressing for those who are targeted, whether they lose money or not.

The impact on health and well-being can often be far greater than the financial loss. People lose confidence and can suffer from increased isolation and become more fearful. This, in turn, leads to deterioration in both mental and physical health, but it's by working together across a wide range of organisations that we're well-placed to influence change. We can help stop scammers inflicting the pain and misery that ruins lives, and that's a strong message from this debate. Feeling safe and secure in your home and community is fundamental for everyone. That's why we made a commitment in 2013 to support the extension of no-cold-caller zones to prevent rogue traders and cold callers from contacting people in their homes. But not all scams are conducted on the doorstep—[Interruption.]

Thanks for taking the intervention. I'm really pleased that you've made mention of the fact that you've been supporting no-cold-calling zones because, I think, obviously, the theme of the debate here, really, has been more about online and telephone calls that have been scams. I've been a 'scambassador' for some time as part of the programme that's been running to involve politicians in this, but one of the things that many people have asked me to encourage the Welsh Government to adopt is for Wales to be a no-cold-calling country, and I wonder, Minister, whether that is something that the Welsh Government has considered. Surely, it must be able to look at encouraging counties to come forward with their own schemes. I wonder whether that is an approach that you might consider taking forward.

Well, I thank Darren Millar for that recognition that—. In fact, we have debated this, probably with you, in the Chamber in terms of supporting the extension of no-cold-caller zones. I'll certainly go back and look at that and report back to you, not just as an ambassador, but in response to this debate.

When I was saying that not all scams are conducted on the doorstep, we know that individuals are targeted by post, over the telephone, and, increasingly, via cyber scams. We probably didn't know that so far back when we were looking at this originally. The Welsh Government recognises that the financial and digital inclusion of our citizens can help people become more aware of the threats and increase confidence in implementing simple steps to protect themselves. We have a financial inclusion strategy that acknowledges that increased financial capability can help people avoid becoming the victims of scams, and that could, of course—. For those victims, it has an impact on their ability to stay in employment, it can lead or contribute to debt and housing and welfare issues, all of which have established links to mental ill health. Our digital inclusion strategic framework does recognise that online scams can affect anyone, but those who lack basic digital skills to protect themselves online can be especially vulnerable to these scammers.

We know that online scams are becoming increasingly prevalent as more people are making online payments, banking online, communicating via e-mail and social media, and although the banks are doing excellent work in this area, we must all raise awareness of the threats to help people avoid falling victim to evermore sophisticated scams. Fraud is now recognised as the most prevalent crime in the UK and criminals are developing evermore sophisticated techniques to scam people out of their money.

Although responsibility for policies on crime are not devolved to Welsh Government, several areas of devolved responsibility can impact on community safety and anti-social behaviour. In March of this year, Tarian, the regional organised crime unit, arranged the Wales cyber security bus tour to educate people and businesses about cyber security and crime. That was funded by the Welsh Government's cyber resilience revenue grant. It travelled to every local authority area in Wales, engaged with members of the public, businesses, providing them with cyber security advice to ensure that people in businesses are able to recognise the signs of cyber crime and have the tools they need to stay safe online. And I can assure Members that I meet regularly with chief constables, police and crime commissioners of each of the four forces in Wales, where we discuss matters of mutual interest aimed at making communities safer. Our Welsh police forces are raising awareness of scams. The Police and Crime Commissioner for South Wales is working with partner agencies and communities in south Wales to tackle nuisance doorstep callers and uninvited traders. The Welsh Government continues to provide funding for an additional 500 community support officers who work in our communities, providing assistance where and when needed, and regularly carry out awareness raising about scams with local residents and the important role they can play.

I welcome the actions being taken by the National Trading Standards scams team to train 1 million friends across the UK by 2020, including 50,000 in Wales, over the next two years. It's about encouraging people to look out for each other within their communities and recognise the signs that someone might be at risk—that can only be a positive step in the prevention of further crimes. And I'd like to highlight the work of the Wales Against Scams Partnership, WASP, whose members include Age Cymru, the Older People's Commissioner for Wales, and trading standards. So, I hope I've reassured Members that the Welsh Government is concerned about this issue. We're working hard within our devolved responsibilities to stamp out scams and support victims and we'll continue to provide support and raise awareness of this important issue wherever possible, and will raise our concerns and work with the UK Ministers who remain responsible for these matters. Diolch.

Thank you. And that brings today's proceedings to a close. Thank you.

The meeting ended at 19:02.