To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether each individual instance of money stolen through the cloning of debit and credit cards is counted as a distinct crime in local police crime statistics; and if she will make a statement. (182269)

[holding answer 25 January 2008]: From 15 January 2007 a revised system of recording plastic card fraud was introduced with agreement from the Association of Payment Clearing Services, Association of Chief Police Officers and police forces. The first stage was the introduction of a less bureaucratic method of recording crimes based on the numbers of accounts defrauded as opposed to the number of individual fraudulent transactions on an account; this also reflecting the fact that in most cases the financial institution where the account is held stands the financial loss rather than the separate parties to individual transactions.

The 2^nd stage introduced from 1 April 2007 was to give financial institutions a network of single points of contact within each police force where they can report cheque and plastic card fraud which will appear in local police statistics.

Where individual account holders or traders are not refunded moneys lost through fraud on plastic cards by their financial institution, they can also report the matter to police, where it must appear in local police statistics on crime based on the number of accounts defrauded.

Full guidance issued to both police and financial institutions is contained within the Home Office Counting Rules for Recorded Crime (which is a public document available online at:

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/countrules.html

under Classification 53C.