Lack of covid preparedness and planning, combined with weaknesses in existing systems across Government, have led to an unacceptable level of mistakes, waste, loss and openings for fraudsters which will all end up robbing current and future taxpayers of billions of pounds. That was the verdict of Dame Meg Hillier, Chair of the Public Accounts Committee of MPs, which has published a ‘covid-19 cost tracker update‘.
Meg Hillier, Labour MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch, said: “It is essential that for as long as we will be paying the costs of Covid19, which is at least the next 20 years just in some of the loan repayment terms, the Treasury and all of Government continue to account specifically for what it has spent in response to the pandemic. Government must be held accountable in this way to all the future taxpayers who will be paying for this response. Crucially this must ensure lessons are learned for when the next big crisis hits – be it climate, health or financial.”
HM Treasury told the MPs that the most likely estimated fraud within the government schemes from spring 2020 – Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS), and Eat Out to Help Out (EOHO) – were 8.7 per cent and 8.5pc respectively. That 8.7pc would mean that the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme is estimated to lose £5.3 billion to fraud and error.
In its report, MPs raised concern that HM Treasury ‘does not intend to adequately monitor and update the ongoing cost of COVID-19 to the taxpayer’. MPs complained that HM Treasury does not yet know how much money has been lost to fraud and error across government’s response to COVID-19; and that HM Treasury has not set out what lessons it has learnt from the government’s response to COVID-19 and how it will apply these.
As the report stated, the pandemic required government to respond rapidly to emerging issues across all areas of society. “It is essential that government learns from its response to the pandemic and identifies what it should do to ensure that those lessons are applied, both to improve its ability to respond to emergencies, and to improve its business-as-usual service delivery. Departments cannot wait until the public inquiry, which may take some years to complete, to learn the lessons,” the report said.
The report quoted that UK Government has spent £261 billion on 374 measures in response to the pandemic; expected to cost a total of £370 billion over their lifetime – up to ten years in the repayment term of the Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS) and typically 20 years in the Cultural Recovery Fund.
For the full report visit parliament.uk.
