GROWTH in cybercrime is being treated with complacency by the Government, Croydon North MP Steve Reed has said.
His complaint follows what he claims was an inadequate answer to a House of Commons question on Monday.
Mr Reed, shadow minister for home affairs, used the question to point out to home office minister Lynne Featherstone that card crime was up by a quarter and online banking fraud by 71 per cent.
He said: "More and more people shop online, particularly over Christmas and the New Year, but Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary found that just 2 per cent of police had any training in cybercrime. When will the Government stop being so complacent about crime that is still rising?"
Ms Featherstone replied that until now cybercrime "has been a lesser interest."
She said Mr Reed was right to say the trend among all people now is to buy online, adding: "I would say that what is illegal offline is also illegal online.
"Policing cyberspace is just as important as policing the streets, and that is what our police force is doing."
Mr Reed said later: "The Government has been crowing a lot about falling crime figures but what really is happening is that crime is changing.
Describing Ms Featherstone's answer to his question as "shockingly complacent", Mr Reed said: "More crime is happening online and the Government is doing pretty much nothing about tackling it."
He called on the Government to deal with the problem head on by training specialist cybercrime teams of police to cope with what he said was a "major and growing form of crime and theft."
"We need specialist teams to find and bring cybercrime fraudsters to justice and help keep people safe," he added.
"Because businesses are losing money to fraud, those losses are passed on in higher costs to us."
Mr Reed also urged internet service providers to do more to warn their customers when there were major hacking incidents online.
