On Tuesday 18th of January Labour tabled an urgent question in
Parliament to force Ministers to explain why they have written
off at least £4.3bn of the funds fraudulently obtained through
coronavirus help schemes.
Last week the Government sneaked out the estimate with no press
release or statement to Parliament. Today Labour questioned
why more was not being done to stop fraudsters getting away with
keeping billions of pounds of public money they acquired through
the government's Covid business support schemes.
During the debate, Labour’s Chief Secretary to the Treasury called on
the Treasury to “launch an investigation into how this happened
and do more to recover this money from the fraudsters who stole
it in the first place.”
In the House of Commons, Labour’s Chief Secretary to the Treasury,
said:
“This writing off comes as families are facing a cost of living
triple whammy of rocketing energy bills, tax increases and a
decline in real wages.
“And coming on top of billions spent on crony contracts and
billions more lost in loan fraud schemes, these levels of waste
destroy any claim the party opposite ever had to careful
stewardship of the public finances.”
Notes for Editors:
Source for government write off:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/hmrc-responses-to-inaccurate-claims
Sources for comparisons of £4.3 billion
£154 written off for each one of the 27.8 million households in
the UK: Families and households in the
UK - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)
£4.3 billion is around half of the £9.072 billion Government
Grant to Police Forces that has been provisionally allocated for
2022/23 (Source: Written Statement
HCWS503, Additional Table 3, 16
December 2021).
£4.3 billion would cover the majority of the cost of most of
the £4.9 billion that is
currently allocated for education recovery funding.
£4.3 billion is more than the Government announced in the 2021 Autumn
Budget and Spending Review “to make progress on building
40 new hospitals by 2030”
