Report: the 2006 Fraud Review ten years on

I was proud to be asked to research and write the Fraud Advisory Panel’s 2016 annual review – The Fraud Review, ten years on. (Click on the cover image, left, for a full pdf.)

Educating, training, publishing, campaigning, researching, organising; the Fraud Advisory Panel does so much important work to improve the UK’s neglected and beleaguered fraud defences. It is a privilege, as well as a real pleasure, to be so deeply involved in so much of its communications activities.

The Panel’s annual review traditionally takes a critical look at some important area of fraud fighting (click here to see past editions). This year it was the turn of the Fraud Review, published exactly 10 years ago this month and the brainchild of the attorney general of the time, Lord Peter Goldsmith.

The 2006 Fraud Review was a bold initiative by any measure. A 370-page final report made painful reading; expert contributors laid bare the widespread and long-standing inadequacies of the government’s response to fraud. Nonetheless its unflinching clarity was applauded and the detailed blueprint for sustained and sustainable improvement was widely welcomed. A full ten years on the Fraud Advisory Panel’s 2016 annual review asked how much of the Fraud Review’s enormous promise had successive governments (of various stripes) actually delivered?

The answer was not a comforting one.