Tackling Fraud and Preventing Government Waste

Paula Barker Excerpts

Tuesday 1st February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and many happy returns of the day.

Notwithstanding what the Paymaster General suggested earlier, this debate called by my party is absolutely the right one. It is easy to forget, given the plethora of scandals afflicting this Government, that when it comes to actual good governance they fall short of that marker. Perhaps it is as a result of the cumulative effect of those scandals— certainly on the back of the Owen Paterson debacle—that these issues are starting to pick up traction. The issues of waste, fraud, fast-track procurement processes and contracts that did not deliver are all interconnected. They did not begin with Owen Paterson and end with Lord Agnew’s resignation.

Ever since the pandemic began, Members on the Opposition side of the House have raised questions, as any good Opposition should; but we were derided and ignored, accused of playing party politics throughout a national crisis. These days the Chancellor is conspicuous by his absence. That is in stark contrast to the dizzying heights of his popularity early in the pandemic, but it also means that he cannot continue to evade accountability and run from the truth.

It is not as if the Government were not warned. I attended a Westminster Hall debate called by my good and hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) on 8 December 2020, on the back of the National Audit Office report that was critical of the Government in respect of transparency about the use of public funds for covid contracts. Companies with no track record or experience of delivering comprehensive outcomes on anything, let alone specialist services, were awarded contracts to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayer cash, and the only criterion, as far as we can tell, was their personal connections with the Conservative party and Conservative Ministers—a bit like the pub landlord, for example. It is absolutely shameful. At about that time, Conservative Ministers such as Lord Bethell were refusing to publish a list of the companies awarded contracts to provide PPE because of the “commercial sensitivity” associated with the high-priority VIP lane; others might call it the Tory gravy train.

Then there is the abject failure in terms of outcomes, most famously that of track and trace, at an eye-watering £37 billion. Consultants were on £7,000 a day; there were jobs for mates such as Baroness Harding, who was completely out of her depth, and money was being funnelled to companies like Serco which cannot even deliver decent asylum accommodation in my own constituency. When this Government claim that they got the big calls right during the pandemic, they are so far off the mark that one must wonder whether the booze consumed during recent Downing Street parties has killed off considerable numbers of brain cells.



We know that these are difficult times for a Conservative Government when the Telegraph runs with the headline “Government waste is an insult to taxpayers”. Now the latest reveal is that £4.3 billion has been lost to fraud in the covid support schemes—written off, never to be seen again—while £3.5 billion in public contracts has gone to Conservative pals in the private sector. The Government’s so-called levelling-up fund alone could have been three times as large if No. 11 had not been so flagrant with public money. Who knows? We could have afforded Northern Powerhouse Rail, not the cheap and nasty integrated rail plan that we have received.

I have to mention the 3 million excluded self-employed taxpayers who continue to be ignored by this Government and who have not had one penny in support, because the Government say that could be open to fraud. The hypocrisy is astounding. When all is said and done after the pandemic, history will not be kind to this Government. They are economical with the truth—and that is putting it kindly—but less so with the public finances. They have been nothing short of an abject failure.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call Peter Grant.