Covid fraud and error cost taxpayers £10.9bn, report will say

Covid-19 support programmes cost taxpayers nearly £11bn through fraud and error, a report will say.

The Covid Counter Fraud Commissioner Tom Hayhoe will say fraudsters exploited a “golden opportunity” when he shares his findings with MPs this week, the BBC understands.

Covid-era policies initiated by the previous Conservative government include the furlough wage subsidies, ‘bounce-back’ loans, the Eat Out to Help Out programme and one-off grants.

They were credited with propping up the economy throughout the Covid lockdowns, however, there has been criticism that the speed of the roll-out of financial support and a lack of eligibility checks led to widespread error and fraud.

Mr Hayhoe is expected to reveal the full scale of Covid-19 financial fraud when his final report is shared with MPs on Tuesday.

A lack of anti-fraud controls in Covid schemes that were set up quickly by ministers in Boris Johnson’s government are expected to be highlighted in the report and blamed for the huge figure.

Rushed rollouts meant “accepting a high level of fraud risk, without plans for managing or mitigating this risk,” it will say.

Details of the report were first published by the Sunday Mirror.

In September the government launched a voluntary repayment scheme for people and businesses to return pandemic scheme money with no questions asked until the end of December.

Mr Hayhoe has been tasked by Chancellor Rachel Reeves with trying to recover the public money lost to fraud and underperforming contracts using his experience in procurement as the former chair of an NHS trust.

His previous reports found that pandemic-era PPE contracts cost the British taxpayer £1.4bn on undelivered contracts and unusable gowns, masks and gloves.

Only a small fraction of that – £182m – has been recovered by HM Treasury.

The National Crime Agency is separately investigating possible criminal offences committed in the PPE procurement system.