Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many claims were excluded or rejected from the Government covid-19 furlough scheme; and if he will summarise the reasons for exclusion.

The Government has been clear throughout the pandemic that HMRC should prioritise getting vital support to businesses and their employees.

HMRC designed the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) to prevent fraud before any payments were made, in both how they set the eligibility criteria and the claim process itself.

To qualify for CJRS, employers needed a Pay As You Earn scheme and to submit a Real Time Information (RTI) return. Additionally, for claims with 100 employees or more, employers were required to provide details of the individual employees’ wages.

HMRC also put in place a series of checks on claims before they were paid, so they blocked those that were highly indicative of criminal activity.

As a result, an estimated 21,500 ineligible claims for CJRS were automatically blocked from entering the claims process.

In addition to those that were blocked, a further 3,500 claims for CJRS were rejected in 2020-21 as they showed indications of being linked to criminal activity.

Further checks also included checking claim amounts against employment information already returned to HMRC and capping any excessive CJRS claims to the correct entitlement amount.

Details of HMRC’s prepayment compliance activity for 2021-22 will be released in HMRC’s Annual Report and Accounts later this year. This will provide the information on blocked and rejected claims for 2021-22.