COVID schemes fraud and error cost taxpayers £11bn

COVID-19 Fraud and mistake outgo the payer astir £11bn, a authorities watchdog has found.

Pandemic enactment programmes specified arsenic furlough, bounce-back loans, enactment grants and Eat Out to Help Out led to £10.9bn successful fraud and error, COVID Counter-Fraud Commissioner Tom Hayhoe's last study has concluded.

Lack of authorities information to people economical enactment made it "easy" for fraudsters to assertion nether much than 1 strategy and unafraid dual funding, the study said.

An earlier study from Mr Hayhoe for the Treasury successful June recovered that failed idiosyncratic protective instrumentality (PPE) contracts during the pandemic outgo the British payer £1.4 billion, with £762 cardinal spent connected unused extortion instrumentality improbable ever to beryllium recovered.

Factors down the mislaid wealth had included authorities over-ordering of PPE, and delays successful checking it.

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