Covid-19: Financial Support Schemes

Baroness Kramer Excerpts

Wednesday 6th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I absolutely agree with the noble Lord. In addition to the £48.8 million that we announced in the Spring Statement, we have also put additional resources and money into the HMRC fraud service. The Taxpayer Protection Taskforce from HMRC, which is also targeting recouping money from those people, is expected to recover between £800 million and £1 billion by the end of 2022-23.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, while the public is very grateful for the support it got during Covid, I do not believe it will easily excuse the levels of fraud and abuse of public money. Can the Government now tell us what they are putting in place in preparation for the next crisis and the next need to put out emergency funding, to make sure that the systems have within them decent checks and safeguards? For example, the British Business Bank estimates that it could have saved nearly all of that fraud had it waited 24 to 48 hours before actually issuing the money, and used that time for essential checks.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, we have given the British Business Bank additional resources to tackle the issue in bounce-back loans. As I said in response to an earlier question, part of the role of the new public sector fraud authority is to conduct post-event assurance, which will specifically look at Covid 19 spending and learn lessons. A few of the authority’s other functions will be across government, such as the provision of data analytics capability, and for those government departments that do not already have it, greater expertise in assessing fraud risk up front, learning lessons and enforcement for particular Government spending.