Business: Coronavirus

(asked on 17th January 2022) - View Source

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will make it his policy to increase resources to HMRC's Taxpayer Protection Taskforce to recover more of the monies in covid-19 support claimed in fraud and error.


Answered by
Lucy Frazer Portrait
Lucy Frazer
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
This question was answered on 25th January 2022

The Covid-19 support schemes were designed to prevent as much error and fraud as possible before any payments were made, while still quickly supporting those who needed it. Robust measures were put in place to control error and fraud in the key Covid support schemes. The controls put in place delivered results.

A significant amount of funding has already been invested in HMRC to ensure a level playing field for legitimate businesses, and to protect taxpayers from fraudulent use of these schemes. This compliance activity saw HMRC recover £536 million of overclaimed grants in the year 2020-21.

To bolster HMRC’s compliance work, the Government has also invested over £100 million in a Taxpayer Protection Taskforce of 1,265 HMRC staff to combat fraud on the HMRC Covid-19 schemes, one of the largest and quickest responses to a fraud risk by HMRC. The taskforce is expected to recover £800 million to £1 billion from fraudulent or incorrect payments over the next two years.

The Government takes error and fraud relating to Covid-19 support schemes extremely seriously. However, it is not possible to eliminate it completely, and this applies to Government schemes all over the world. The Government has been clear from the beginning that the Covid schemes would carry a certain level of error and fraud risk.

HMRC’s compliance efforts are focusing on those who have deliberately sought to cheat the system, rather than spending public money to penalise those who have tried their best to do the right thing. Where claimants will have made genuine mistakes, HMRC will help them put things right.

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