The British taxpayer has suffered losses of more than £10 billion due to fraud and error in Covid support schemes, according to the Government’s own figures. The Telegraph has the details.
Labour accused ministers of attempting to “bury bad news” about public sector fraud losses totalling more than £50 billion by publishing the figures in a mass data dump.
Last month, the Public Sector Fraud Authority (PSFA) released a report on the “cross-Government fraud landscape”. According to the report, the total level of fraud and error in Covid support schemes amounted to an estimated £10.3 billion.
Outside Covid schemes, the PSFA estimated that total fraud and error in 2021-22 came to between £39.8 billion and £58.5 billion.
The revelations follow criticism of the Government’s commitment to tackling fraud. In 2022, Lord Agnew, the then anti-fraud minister, resigned during a Lords debate in which he accused the Treasury of having “no knowledge of, or little interest in, the consequences of fraud” and making “schoolboy errors” in relation to Covid loans. …
Darren Jones, the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said: “The Conservatives tried their best to bury these figures under a mountain of other trash – but they cannot hide the truth that warnings were ignored and billions of pounds of public money was handed out to fraudsters.
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