Report Fraud and Student Loans
Money Box
BBC
4.2 • 825 Ratings
🗓️ 28 February 2026
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Billions of pounds is lost each year to fraud, be that by criminals simply stealing someone's money or by thieves tricking victims into giving them their details before draining their bank accounts. It's a crime that is massively under-reported, with very low conviction rates too. To tackle this, a new agency's been created called 'Report Fraud'. It replaces the problematic "Action Fraud" which had been the place for victims to report fraud for over a decade. Paul Lewis interviews Chief Superintendent Amanda Wolf who's the Head of Report Fraud.
There are calls for a cut in the interest rate on some student loans. In recent weeks some graduates have been saying they feel they were missold their loans, because they're only paying off interest on what they owe, despite high levels of payments. The Department for Education says that its making what it called "tough but fair" decisions to protect taxpayers and students. We'll discuss that with the Higher Education Policy Institute.
There is growing pressure from charities and MPs for the government to introduce statutory regulation of the bailiff sector in England and Wales as a matter of urgency. Campaigners say it's about making sure people who are in debt aren't on the receiving end of bad practice form bailiffs breaking the rules.
And half a million households on heat networks now have new protections when it comes to their heating bills.
Presenter: Paul Lewis Reporters: Bisi Adebayo and Dan Whitworth Researcher: Niamh McDermott Editor: Jess Quayle
(First broadcast on Radio 4 12pm Saturday 31st January 2026)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | I'm no longer ravenous. I'll no longer eat until I fall asleep. |
| 0:11.0 | The Hunger Game, a new five-part series exploring the meteoric rise of weight loss drugs. |
| 0:16.0 | It's been an incredible story with these drugs. |
| 0:18.1 | The uptake, the amount of product that's been sold, the amounts of money |
| 0:21.2 | is cost. What the drugs do, how they work, and the knock-on effects of their widespread use. |
| 0:26.5 | We'll be sitting here in three years' time going, oh, it caused problems that we're now going |
| 0:31.3 | to have to fix. The Hunger Game with me, Professor Gilesio. Listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:38.4 | Hello, welcome to this Moneybox podcast, with bailiffs behaving badly. |
| 0:43.8 | She's like, I'll take your teller, your coach, anything that's not on finance, your kids' computers. |
| 0:49.1 | And I'm like, wow. |
| 0:50.0 | The government is being urged to introduce statutory regulation. |
| 0:54.5 | From this week, half a million households on heat networks have new protection from unfair heating bills |
| 0:59.8 | and the graduates who say they were misled about their student loans, leaving them with a debt they can't repay. |
| 1:06.7 | But first, each year, millions of people have billions of pounds stolen through fraud. |
| 1:12.1 | It is now 45% of all crime in England and Wales. |
| 1:16.2 | And this month, a new way of reporting these crimes was launched. |
| 1:19.5 | It's called report fraud, and it replaces the largely discredited action fraud, |
| 1:24.4 | which victims, and indeed MPs, accused of taking details of the crimes, |
| 1:29.4 | but then not taking much action at all. |
| 1:32.4 | Moneybots listener Christine's elderly aunt had tens of thousands of pounds stolen and, as |
| 1:37.8 | advised, Christine called action fraud. |
... |
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