Crime in England and Wales has more than doubled to 14.1 million offences annually, according to the first official estimate to include fraud and cybercrime.
There were believed to have been 7.6 million cases of fraud and cybercrime in the year to June. Of these there were 2.5 million computer-related offences and 5.1 million cases of fraud.
Mike Penning, the Home Office minister responsible for policing and crime, admitted that his own bank account was targeted by criminals last year.
“I don’t fully understand how you fully protect things. They are so clever when they hack into your account,” he said.
The latest Crime Survey of England and Wales figures show other types of offending — excluding fraud and computer offences — falling by 8 per cent to 6.5 million. The survey, which interviews people about their experience of crime, said violence was stable and theft had fallen.
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Separate figures on crimes recorded by 43 police forces showed a 25 per cent rise in violent crime including rises in knife possession, and knife point assaults, threats to kill and rapes.
Over the past three years there has been an increase in offences where knives were used, apart from robbery and murders. There were 13,613 offences of “assault with injury or intent to cause serious harm” in which a knife was used in the year to the end of June, up 15 per cent on the previous year.
Threats to kill with a knife rose by almost a quarter from 1,428 in the year to the end of June 2014 to 1,770 in the twelve months to June 2015. Knifepoint rapes increased by 10 per cent from 285 to 313 and sexual assaults involving a knife by 11 per cent from 104 to 115.
The number of homicides, including murders and manslaughter, rose by 8 per cent to 569, according to police figures.
Sexual offences rose by 41 per cent including a 43 per cent rise in rapes to 31,000 with other sex crimes jumping by more than two thirds to 68,000.
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Statisticans at the Office for National Statistics said the rise in recorded sex crimes reflected changes in police attitudes with officers now talking about “reports of rape” and no longer referring to “allegations of rape”.
The publication of estimates of the extent of fraud and cybercrime follows years in which there has been growing concern that new crimes were not being captured in the Crime Survey.
Just over half the 5.1 million frauds involved some initial financial loss and in 2.5 million incidents there was no loss, according to the ONS.
Mark Button, professor of criminology at the University of Portsmouth, said: “These figures show the crimes politicians have been focusing upon have been declining but those offences like cybercrime have been growing as we make much greater use of the internet and new people are coming into crime.”