The UK Government is not doing enough to combat e-crime and what progress it is making on tackling internet fraud seems slow, a House of Lords report said yesterday.

Last autumn, members of the Lords Science and Technology Committee described how the internet had become "the playground of criminals" and criticised the government's "Wild West" approach of leaving online security up to the individual as "inefficient and unrealistic".

However, ministers largely dismissed their concerns.

Yesterday in a follow-up report, peers renewed their calls for legislation to establish the principle that banks should be held responsible for an individual's losses incurred by electronic fraud, for new procedures so that the public can report alleged e-crime directly to the police rather than having to go through the banks and a law to require organisations to inform the public of losses of personal data as soon as they become aware of them.

The committee noted that the government had at last started to take the risks seriously but regretted that a "level of indifference on the part of the government has now been dispelled only as a result of recent incidents involving serious losses of personal data".

On the issue of banks accepting liability for refunding victims of online fraud, Lord Sutherland of Houndwood, the committee chairman, said it was "disappointed" the government had still not accepted there should be legislation to establish the principle.

He noted: "The result of being the victim of online fraud can be crippling for an individual who can find his entire savings or current account wiped out in an instant.

"The Banking Code does not offer protection. We believe that legislation would have the added advantage of encouraging the banks to be more pro-active about improving the security of their online banking operations."