Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they have taken to tackle fraud in public sector contracts; and what estimate they have made of how much money was lost to fraud in each of the last three years.

The Public Sector Fraud Authority (PSFA), established in August 2022, works with government departments to help public bodies understand and reduce the impact of fraud and error against the public sector. The support provided includes monitoring compliance against the Government Counter Fraud Functional Standards GovS013. These standards are referenced within the Government Commercial Functional Standards GovS008 to signpost counter fraud best practices to commercial colleagues across government. The Procurement Bill will strengthen the counter fraud response in procurement and contracts by extending the grounds for exclusion and establishing a debarment list.

In 2021/2022 government departments detected c£224m in fraud related to public procurement and contracts (outside of tax and welfare). This figure is an increase on previous years (£169m in 2019/20 and £125m in 2020/21).