Brexit is to blame for the failure to prosecute more frauds, the Crown Prosecution Service has claimed.
Gregor McGill, CPS director of legal services, told the Commons justice committee that leaving the EU had created problems for police pursuing fraudsters overseas.
The committee heard that about 25 per cent of fraud cases involved only defendants from the UK, with those involving “foreign” defendants rising “considerably more”.
Mr McGill said: “It’s still possible to do the work but when you are outside the EU it’s hard because you have to go through treaties, and you have to build up local relationships and local engagement to get done what was a matter of course when we were part of the EU.
‘Makes it more difficult’
“So it doesn’t stop us doing it but it slows us down and makes it more difficult.”
The Telegraph revealed earlier this year that just one in 1,000 frauds were prosecuted. Only 4,924 fraud offences resulted in a charge last year out of more than five million scams reported by people according to the Office for National Statistics annual survey of crime.
This means just 0.1 per cent of frauds resulted in a prosecution despite the number of offences rising by 32.4 per from 3.8 million in 2020, according to Telegraph analysis of official data.
Mark Fenhalls QC, chairman of the Bar Association, told the committee: “There’s an analogy with the lorries waiting to get their paperwork done, trying to cross the Channel.
“The fact is it hasn’t made us more agile, what it has meant is that we’ve had to rebuild and start relationships afresh with people who no longer trust us in the same way.”
Failed to give priority
The claim comes amid criticism by watchdogs that police and prosecutors had failed to give sufficient priority to fraud. Mr Fenhalls said “fraud has not until now been a priority for anybody”.
Mr McGill said: “I think we need to make fraud a priority for law enforcement agencies because it’s a sad fact that we talk about, ‘do people know what the state of fraud is?’
“You’re more likely to be a victim of fraud than any other crime in this country and the cost to the economy is about £4.7 billion. It is a significant issue so the priority is, I think, really important.”
