The UK may be set for wholesale changes in the way cybercrime is dealth with as the House of Lords' Science and Technology select committee is looking at different ideas it thinks may improve the current situation. The final and comprehensive report based on evidence from many experts in the technology field is due for publication in the summer, but recent comments from Lord Broers, who heads the Personal Internet Security sub-committee for the House of Lords, indicate that new legislation may well be proposed.

Lord Broers made his comments at the 2007 InfoSec show in London, where he delivered a keynote address. Apart from mentioning the possibility of new anti-cybercrime legislation he also told the public that one of the proposals would be the establishment of a single cybercrime complaints centre that would be based online and would function much as the US Internet Crime Complaint Center. The UK website would probably be run by the police, as Lord Broers believes they should be the first port of call for victims of online crimes. However, he claimed that currently police efforts to curb cybercrime are underfunded, as the Metropolitan Police in London for instance only has one person working on phishing cases.

In his address Lord Broers also criticised the current set-up in which he feels too much responsibility for cybersecurity is laid on the end-user. Speaking to members of the technology industry he suggested that new laws could be introduced to redress that balance, while he also criticised some companies such as Microsoft for being too confusing when warning users of new security threats.