To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many offences of fraud relating to credit cards have been notified by banks and other financial institutions to the police in each police force area since April 2007. (222651)

In 2007-08, there were 23,344 cases of fraud by false representation that involved a cheque, plastic card or online bank account recorded by police (this includes some instances of the similar offence of cheque and credit card fraud committed under old legislation in place before 15 January 2007).

These offences could have either been referred direct by a financial institution, reported by an account holder or merchant who was not refunded monies by their financial institution or dealt with as a direct call for service to the police where a suspect was believed to be committing a crime at the time. These offences will in some instances relate to online fraud, but there is no specific category of recorded crime to separately identify these. In addition, we do not separately identify fraud offences relating to credit cards that have been notified to police by banks or financial institutions.

Statistics giving the number of fraud offences relating to cheque, plastic card and online bank accounts recorded by each police force area since April 2007 are shown in the following table.