The King’s Speech: Digital fraud crisis to be tackled by new legislation

The King’s Speech: Digital fraud crisis to be tackled by new legislation

The UK Government will introduce new legislation to deter digitally enabled crime, the King’s Speech has confirmed. 

The efforts will form part of a broader regulatory framework to empower police forces and the justice systems to “prevent new or complex crimes”. 

Digital-enabled crime, which includes cyber-powered crime and data theft, has been a focal point of discussion recently after the Social Market Foundation stated that the UK is in the midst of a “fraud emergency”.  

Earlier this year, the Scottish Police Authority also revealed they were going through a fraud handling crisis as the crime rate had increased by 68 per cent over the last five years. 

The UK ranks fifth worldwide for data breaches, with almost 30 million instances every year. 

Opening last week's AI safety summit, King Charles stated the world was “witnessing one of the greatest technological leaps in the history of human endeavour” as he called for AI risks to be dealt with “a sense of urgency, unity and collective strength”. 

The Kings speech also revealed efforts to strengthen independent judicial oversight. 

Amongst other digital technology measures revealed was new legislation “to support the safe commercial development of emerging industries” including self-driving vehicles and introducing a new competitive framework for digital markets. 

The latter includes fines for breaches of consumer protection laws as well as steps that digital platforms should take to ensure the consumer reviews they use are not fabricated. Currently, the bill is going through the last stages at the House of Commons before progressing to the House of Lords.