The government has toughened its fraud laws - now it must make them count

CLLS Corporate Crime & Corruption Committee Chair Louise Hodges and Vice-Chair Neill Blundell write:  Only one in every hundred reported frauds leads to a criminal justice outcome. At those odds, the threat of prosecution offers little credible deterrence. The scale of the enforcement gap has been laid bare in Jonathan Fisher’s latest report: an estimated 4.1 million fraud offences were committed in the year to June 2025, potentially accounting for half of all crime in England and Wales. Yet only a tiny fraction of reported cases results in offenders being brought to justice.

Fraud cannot continue to be treated as an unavoidable cost of living and doing business in the digital age. It causes profound harm to individuals, damages businesses, and undermines confidence in the institutions on which the UK economy depends.

The test now is what government, under fresh leadership, does next. The success of the Fisher Review will be measured by whether more fraud is prevented, investigations progress faster, and offenders face a credible prospect of punishment.

The UK has toughened its fraud laws. It must now give the system the leadership, funding, and infrastructure required to make them count.