Covid Fraud

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Monday 29th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am afraid I do not know whether we are still using the same consultants; I am more than happy to check for the noble Lord.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I think we need to stand back and take a broad view of the problems. We all know that Covid was a challenge right across government and that fraud was an issue. However, the important thing is to do better next time, which is why we set up the Public Sector Fraud Authority in 2022 and introduced the use of AI into fraud detection, which helped with some of the sort of problems that have been raised. Given the doubt expressed in parts of the report, is the Minister confident that the Government of the day will, in practice, do significantly better next time? I am looking for a commitment here.

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I can fully understand the noble Baroness’s desire to stand back from this. On entering government, this Government found that £674 million of contracts were in dispute. However, we also inherited a recommendation from the previous Government that any attempt to reclaim that money should be abandoned. The commissioner’s report set out that £10.9 billion was lost to fraud and error from Covid spending. Failed pandemic-era PPE contracts cost the British taxpayer £1.4 billion and over £1.9 billion of bounce-back loans have been flagged as suspected fraud to the British Business Bank. The commissioner also found that the previous Government’s over-ordering of PPE and delays in quality-checking meant that £762 million is unlikely to ever be recovered, with substandard PPE gowns, masks and visors remaining uninspected for up to two years, preventing recovery of public money. Covid fraud and corruption is an appalling financial scandal which has cost UK taxpayers dearly. The noble Baroness asks for a commitment that we will do better next time; I think we could hardly do any worse.