UK ‘losing the war against cyber crime’ – MPs

In a new report, the Home Affairs Select Committee recommends tougher sentences for online criminals and improved training for police officers to fight the problem.

The group of MPs said sufficient funding and resources for tackling online crime, which includes identity theft, industrial espionage, credit card fraud and child exploitation, has not been allocated.

Committee chair Keith Vaz MP said: “The threat of a cyber attack to the UK is so serious it is marked as a higher threat than a nuclear attack. You can steal more on the internet than you can by robbing a bank and online criminals in 25 countries have chosen the UK as their number one target.

“Astonishingly, some are operating from EU countries.

“If we don’t have a 21st century response to this 21st century crime, we will be letting those involved in these gangs off the hook.”

Budget cuts to internet crime officers

The committee said it had been told by Adrian Leppard, deputy assistant commissioner at the City of London Police, that up to a quarter of the UK’s 800 specialist internet crime officers could be lost due to budget cuts.

This was despite evidence the UK was a prime target for many of the 1,300 criminal gangs specialising in fraud.

A quarter of the gangs, many of which are based in eastern Europe and Russia, use the internet as their principal means of deception.

The MPs said police cutbacks came on top of proposed 10 per cent cuts to the budget of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop).

“At a time when fraud and e-crime is going up, the capability of the country to address it is going down,” the report concluded.

Government’s push on internet criminals

The report follows a spate of government efforts to rein in internet crime.

These have included a partnership with the defence industry and telecoms companies, announced earlier this month, which aims to safeguard the country’s defence supply chain against cyber attacks.

Prime Minister David Cameron last week also tightened up online pornography laws and demanded that internet firms block access to child abuse images.

A Home Office spokesman said: “Crime is at record low levels and this government is taking action to tackle the cyber threat, investing more than £850m through the national cyber security programme to develop and maintain cutting-edge capabilities.

“The National Crime Agency will include a new elite national cyber crime unit to target the most serious offenders and provide enhanced intelligence for CEOP so they can protect even more children from harm.

“But we know we need to keep pace with criminals as they target the web and so we continue to consider ways to ensure the police and security services have access to communications data.”