Worksop Guardian 03.05.2023
This week has certainly been an event-filled one. I think everybody will be looking forward in anticipation to the huge number of events organised by volunteers within our local communities to celebrate the Coronation, along with the extra Bank Holiday on Monday.
It was a real privilege to be able to attend a reception in Westminster Hall to meet His Majesty and Her Majesty earlier in the week and London has been bustling with tourists and well-wishers getting ready for the big day. Our monarchy is something that is admired around the world and I am firmly of the belief that it is a force for good and a vital part of our history, heritage and national identity.
A man was also arrested outside Buckingham Palace, so importantly there’s also been some significant news relating to law and order. Our Public Order Bill is now law and this will mean tougher sentence for protestors blocking our road, railways and emergency services. There will be new measures to clamp down on road blocking ‘lock-on’ protestors, like Just Stop Oil.
Police will have more powers to carry out stop and search on protestors and intervene before chaos is caused. Finally, there will be new court orders to stop reoffending protesters who repeated use highly disruptive protest tactics.
We are also doing more to tackle fraud. Fraud now accounts for over 40% of crime. It costs us nearly £7 billion a year and we know these proceeds are funding organised crime and terror. What’s more, new technologies are making these scams easier to do and harder to police.
It’s time to take the fight to the scammers and fraudsters, and put an end to these crimes which can devastate lives and livelihoods within seconds.
This week we launched our new plan to tackle fraud and we’re going to stop scams reaching people in the first place.
We will work with Ofcom to stop more cases of number ‘spoofing’, where scammers impersonate UK numbers and trick people into thinking they’re speaking to banks, telephone companies or other legitimate businesses. We will ban cold calls on all financial products, so that anyone who receives calls trying to sell them products such as crypto currency schemes or insurance will know it’s a scam.
We know that often when you fall victim to a scam, people feel upset, panicked, or embarrassed about being caught out, or worried about whether they’ll ever get their money back. Our plan will help protect you and your loved ones from these scams and the predators who perpetrate them.
