The Department acknowledged that the current police resourcing levels for fraud needed to increase. In April 2022, we reported on the Department’s Police Uplift Programme which aimed to recruit 20,000 new police officers.27 However, as set out in our sister Committee’s report, only 380 of these 20,000 officers (around 2%) will specialise in fraud. The City of London Police told us that forces were willing to investigate fraud but that the issue was often the availability of resources. It explained that many chief constables ask what they were expected to stop doing in order to deal with fraud otherwise they needed more resources. It told us, however, that the first step was getting more from existing resources by focusing on prevention. As our sister Committee recently reported, resourcing issues in policing can also be exacerbated by the significant amounts of time it takes to redact and disclose vast amounts of material that can turn out to be unnecessary to pursuing a case. It recommended clearer guidelines on how the legislation should operate for fraud cases with large quantities of digital material.28