Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, with reference to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, DCMS Annual Report and Accounts 2020-21, published on 16 December 2021, HC 758, if she will make an assessment of the consistency of that Department's higher level of fraud risk appetite during the covid-19 pandemic with the Government's zero-tolerance approach to all internal fraud.

DCMS and our arms-length bodies have a zero-tolerance approach to any incidents of fraud.

We have robust due diligence and grant monitoring processes to ensure that government funding is used for the purposes intended.

Due to the unique circumstances of COVID-19, DCMS agreed to accept a higher tolerance to fraud risk due to the demand for urgent delivery of relief schemes. This was agreed, subject to a number of mitigations including, in particular, investment in our remedial or post-event scrutiny, with Post Event Assurance (PEA) workstreams embedded in COVID-19 relief packages.

DCMS identified immaterial amounts of fraud in 2020-21 (equivalent to 0.03% of its total budget) which is well within the Department's risk tolerance and average tolerance levels for fraud and error across Central Government (0.5 - 5%). The 2020-21 results of our high-risk COVID-19 packages have been shared with the Public Accounts Committee, at the recall session on 4 November 2021. These findings were tested by the National Audit Office as part of their audit of our year-end accounts. The NAO were satisfied and gave an unqualified opinion on our 2020-21 Accounts.

We are currently reviewing our fraud risk appetite and plan to revert to pre-COVID-19 fraud tolerance levels for the financial year 2022-23.