According to Hansard notes from December 15, Mr Timms told parliament: "The Work and Pensions committee is inquiring into pension scams. Much of that problem is online, boosting the profits of tech firms and causing immense hardship.
"Martin Lewis, Which?, my hon. friend the member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens) on the front bench and others have called for such scams to be in scope here.
"The right hon. gentleman says they will be if they are 'user-generated', so can he explain how these measures will address the very serious problem of financial online harms?"
But Mr Dowden replied: "Through secondary legislation, we will set out priority harms. I will not go into every last harm, because that will be a process for scrutiny.
"On the broader point about financial fraud and so on, the right hon. gentleman raises very important points, and of course we will seek to address that as a government; I am just not convinced that this is the appropriate legislative vehicle for doing so."
Over the past couple of years, the Financial Conduct Authority has been cracking down on fraudulent and misleading financial adverts online, and in September 2020 spoke scathingly about Google not doing enough to combat the situation.
As part of its report into the LCF debacle, the FCA stated it was working with online platforms to make sure they "rapidly deliver" on a public commitment to preventing harm from online advertising.
Last year, the regulator said: "We have seen some improvement in checks on advertisers, although considerable work remains to be done. We agree with the LCF review’s recommendation that serious consideration be given to the coverage of financial harm in the proposed Online Harms bill."
Adding his voice to the FCA's, Mr Timms said not including financial harm within this bill would be a "missed opportunity", adding: "I am planning to table an amendment to that bill, to try and bring financial harms into scope.
Google has been working to improve transparency and verification of all advertisers on its platforms. Last year, separate to its business operations verification, the internet giant said it was adding more layers to our advertiser verification to determine bad actors in the ecosystem from the start.
It is understood advertisers will need to submit personal legal identification, business incorporation documents or other information that proves who they are and the country they operate in.
The scale has also been flagged by Google in the past; in 2018 the internet giant terminated 500,000 accounts for violating its policies and, in 2020, Google shut down more than 1m accounts.
