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

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.

The root cause of this crisis is decades of underfunding and deprioritisation of anti-fraud institutions and frameworks under successive governments. This includes the dismantling of regional police fraud squads as well as underinvestment in enforcement agencies and the court system.

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.

For the City of London, effective economic crime enforcement is also essential to the UK’s reputation as a safe and reliable place in which to invest. The Fisher Review is therefore right to call for a fundamental change in approach.

That is not to say that parliament has been idle. The 2023 Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act introduced the failure to prevent fraud offence and widened corporate liability through the senior manager attribution test. The Online Safety Act 2023 imposed responsibilities on technology companies for fraudulent advertising. The Crime and Policing Act 2026 extended the senior manager test to all criminal offences.

Corporate liability is now broader, stricter, and harder to avoid than it was only a few years ago. Fisher’s recommendations therefore arrive on top of a strong framework, not in a legislative vacuum.

But duties and frameworks will not create deterrence if investigators and prosecutors lack the resources, specialist skills, and infrastructure required to use existing powers. Instead they create uncertainty for responsible businesses, increase pressure on overstretched enforcement agencies, and distract from the government’s wider growth agenda. Ultimately, what matters is whether fraud is prevented, detected, investigated, and prosecuted; and whether victims receive justice within a reasonable time.

In 2023, the City of London Law Society’s (CLLS) Corporate Crime and Corruption Committee made a straightforward point in its paper on the future of the Serious Fraud Office: new laws are of little use if they cannot be enforced effectively. The paper called for a dedicated Minister of State for Economic Crime, a substantial increase in the SFO’s budget, and stronger coordination across government and law enforcement. It also proposed that more of the proceeds recovered through corporate fines and Deferred Prosecution Agreements should be ring-fenced for economic crime enforcement.

Several of Fisher’s recommendations closely align with those proposals and that convergence matters. Fraud crosses institutional boundaries, but responsibility for tackling it remains divided among government departments, police forces, prosecutors, regulators, and private companies. A Fraud Lead must therefore be more than a title. The role must have the authority to set priorities, remove barriers, and hold organisations accountable for delivery, supported by stable funding and modern investigative technology.

The debate over jury trials illustrates the same point: reform should be directed at the real source of the problem. The Committee has consistently opposed proposals to remove juries from 'serious and complex' fraud cases. There is no persuasive evidence that juries cause the current pressure on the courts, or that judge-only trials would deliver substantial savings. The real cause is where criminal justice ranks in the hierarchy of priorities.

Fisher finds that proposals to remove juries 'stumble at the threshold' because there is no stable definition of the category to which they would apply. Experience demonstrates that juries can cope when cases are properly managed and presented.

The better response is stronger case management. The Southwark Crown Court protocol provides a practical model for identifying issues early, streamlining evidence, and managing complex proceedings. Fisher recommends extending it to all Crown Courts hearing serious fraud and placing it on a binding footing. That is reform directed at the real problem. It can improve efficiency without removing a fundamental constitutional safeguard.

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.

Louise Hodges is a partner at Kingsley Napley and chairs the CLLS Corporate Crime & Corruption Committee. Neill Blundell is a partner at White & Case and is the Committee's Vice-Chair