Covid report Ministers given fraud prevention warning after £11bn loss

Ministers have been warned that fraud prevention efforts are falling short across government, as a major Covid report found that fraud and errors had resulted in a £10.9bn loss toUK taxpayers during the pandemic.

- Kalyceena Makortoff David Conn

The report, by the independent Covid counter-fraud commissioner, Tom Hayhoe, found that government schemes designed to support struggling businesses and their staff wererolled outat speed with no early safeguards, resulting in huge fraud risks that cost the public purse.

Weak accountability, bad-quality data and poor contracting were the main failures behind the £10.9bn loss, but Hayhoe also concluded that fraud prevention was “insufficiently embedded in thinking and practice across government”.

The losses mounted ona series of schemes launched by the previous Conservative government during the pandemic, including bounce-back loans, small business grants, furlough payments and the eat out to help out programme. Some of the problems stemmed from the fact that government departments generally worked independently to design their own schemes from scratch.

Many public bodies had never made payments on this scale before, meaning that counter-fraud capabilities “varied significantly”, the report said. Hayhoe found most schemes prioritised speed when designing and delivering support, resulting in a “high level of fraud risk”.