To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people in (a) Chorley constituency and (b) England and Wales reported being victims of identity fraud in each of the last five years. (117216)

This information is not available centrally because there is no single offence of identity fraud.

However, the 250 members of CIFAS, the UK’s Fraud Prevention Service for the private sector (mainly financial services companies), recorded 32,737 victims of identity fraud in 2002, 43,094 in 2003, 50,455 in 2004, 56,200 in 2005 and 67,406 in 2006.

In addition, identity theft and identity fraud questions were incorporated into the British Crime Survey in 2005 and the results should give us more information on the number of victims.