Hello and welcome to a special edition of the Spectators podcast.

I'm Kate Andrews, the Spectator's economics editor.

This podcast was recorded at Conservative Party Conference on the topic, what is driving the

fraud explosion?

Fraud by some margin is the biggest crime in Britain. How did this

been out of control? And who was responsible? To discuss all this and more, I was joined by

Tom Tuggenhut, the Minister for Security, Victoria Atkins, Financial Secretary to the Treasury,

Bob Wigley, Chair of UK Finance, Richard Hyde, senior researcher for the Social Market Foundation, and Paul

Davis, fraud director for TSB. The conference panel and this podcast were kindly sponsored by

TSB.

I'm going to start with a few minutes of opening remarks from our ministers.

Start with Tom, then Victoria.

We'll go to our other panelists, please two to three minutes max, because I like to prioritize

audience questions.

So be thinking of those from the very beginning.

Tom, let's start with you.

Thanks very much.

Look, let me tell you why fraud comes under my brief as security minister.

It may not be obvious why it should, but it does.

The reason it does is because the overlap between fraud, state threats and national security

is actually very large.

We see things like ransomware using fraudulent techniques to extract money from British businesses, to steal money

...