Tackling Fraud and Preventing Government Waste

Debate between Ian Lavery and Alex Cunningham

Tuesday 1st February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

It is quite simple really: the Tories cannot be trusted with taxpayers’ money. Since we have been in the Chamber, headlines in the national news have described as jaw-dropping the revelations in the Department of Health and Social Care annual report. Buried on page 199 is a suggestion that there were £8.7 billion in losses on PPE in the Government accounts:

“£0.67 billion of PPE which cannot be used,”

perhaps because it is defective,

“£0.75 billion of PPE which is in excess of the amount”

that might need to be used,

“£2.6 billion of PPE which is not suitable for use within the health and social care sector”,

and,

“£4.7 billion of adjustment to the year-end valuation of PPE”.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

I remember the statement in the House, way back in 2010, when the Government cancelled the new hospital for my constituency. It was going to cost about half a billion pounds. Does my hon. Friend agree that we could have had our hospital, and many others too could have had their hospitals, if this sort of waste was identified properly in Government?

[Ian Lavery]

I fully agree. What could the Government have used £8.7 billion for? A new hospital in my hon. Friend’s constituency? Other hospitals and clinics? Looking after the 6 million people who are still on the NHS waiting list as we sit in this Chamber?

That loss is in addition to what has already been explained in previous speeches. I repeat: the Tories cannot be trusted with taxpayers’ money. Lord Agnew’s resignation has rightly renewed interest in the Government’s attitude towards fraud and the wider handling of public money. He spoke about “schoolboy errors” with regard to this Government—hardly schoolboy errors, by the way, when we are talking about billions and billions of pounds. Is it any wonder that Lord Agnew—a true blue, a loyal blue—stormed out of the Lords? He stormed away because he thought this Government were making schoolboy errors, and he wanted absolutely nothing at all to do with the Treasury decisions and the facts of wasted taxpayers’ finances and fraud.

The figures are staggering. It is estimated that £29 billion a year is lost across Government in fraud, and £4.3 billion of that, paid out in fraud and error under covid support schemes, has simply been wiped away. It has been deleted. Some £3.5 billion in covid contracts was awarded to Tory-linked firms, implicating senior Ministers of the Cabinet. Yet, other than the odd ritual sacrifice to give the impression that they care, the Government and those involved have shown no accountability for that shocking mishandling of public funds.

I can guarantee that, had the 2019 election result been different, things would have been completely different. The right-wing politicians and the press would not have so keenly turned a blind eye to what is happening before our eyes. Mark my words, if £4.3 billion was lost through benefit fraud, the Government would not be taking such a relaxed view on things.

People are 23 times more likely to be prosecuted for benefit fraud than tax fraud in the UK, despite the fact that tax crimes cost the economy nine times more. I could talk for hours about how the Government attack people on benefits and disabled people, how they hound people through the horrible methods used to track down people who are merely existing in life. Yet, if someone has a super-yacht, they can go anywhere and forget everything. That is the sorry state we see our nation in.

It is not an accident or a fault in the system; it is how the system has been carefully designed. The richest in our society have close ties to the Government; they ensure that their money can be shuffled around in offshore accounts and through tax loopholes, while the poorest are relentlessly hounded by a bureaucratic leviathan, which ensures that the system does not give them an inch. This disproportionate focus on working-class crime and the benefit scroungers narrative, peddled relentlessly in the press through tabloids and programmes such as “Benefits Street”, which we all saw on television, has warped public perceptions in a deliberate strategy of divide and rule by the handful of those benefiting handsomely from this fraud at the very highest level.

Lord Agnew’s revelations tell us nothing that we did not already know. Whether that was through the Panama papers, the Paradise papers or the Pandora papers, it is a well-documented fact that the super-wealthy hoard their money to avoid tax that might actually improve society for the many. Instead of tackling this issue, which could save billions of pounds in funds for things such as social care, the Government would rather raise national insurance and cut universal credit, throwing thousands more families into poverty, while inexplicable sums of money accumulate in the hands of the global élite.

Just a nice taster: the rising fortunes of the world’s billionaires during the pandemic fuelled record sales of super-yachts, to the tune of £5.3 billion—that is not bad, is it? Eight hundred and eighty-seven super-yachts were sold in 2021—a 75% increase on the previous year. It is all right for some, is it not? It is not for others, of course.

I urge the Government to finally commit to putting an end to the rampant levels of corruption at the highest level, rather than punish the people of this country yet again.