Martin Lewis has furiously taken aim at the government over the lack of laws to combat fraud scams amid the pandemic, claiming they’re not being ‘taken seriously.’
The money saving expert reflected on the ‘epidemic’ of scams – and how more needs to be done about them.
‘We have had an absolute epidemic of scams in the UK and it is a major problem,’ he told Lorraine Kelly.
‘I am getting to the end of my tether on this, people know I’ve been involved in fighting this for about four or five years. Another report came out the other day – the worst compliment I’ve ever had – that my face alongside Richard Branson is the most used by scammers in the UK on scam adverts,’ he added.
He urged anyone who has fallen victim to scams to call Action Fraud, but admitted: ‘I’ll be honest with you Lorraine, very little will happen if you do that. That organisation is monumentally underfunded.’
‘Fraud is the biggest crime in the UK, these are thieves stealing people’s money,’ he pointed out, adding that it’s ‘very easy’ to fall for sophisticated scams.
‘We don’t police it well enough,’ he insisted. ‘We’ve got the Online [Safety] Bill going through parliament, and yet the government has for some reason excluded scam adverts from it.’
He says there’s a loophole in the new bill (Picture: ITV)
‘It is about time that we took the epidemic of scams in this country […] a bit more seriously,’ he asserted, clarifying to Lorraine: ‘That’s to the politicians, not to you!’
The Online Safety Bill is described as ‘establishing a new regulatory framework to tackle harmful content online.’
Financial experts have said that the bill’s focus on user-generated content has left a loophole for criminals.
Martin previously said of the issue: ‘We live in a world where the policing of scams is dangerously underfunded, leaving criminals to get away with fraud with impunity.’
He added that, by not making tech companies responsible for the scammers’ adverts they are paid to publish, ‘the government has failed to protect millions, in the midst of a pandemic, from one of the most damaging online harms to their financial and mental health.’