Chaotic procurement, pointless self verification to secure bounce back loans, and lack of basic checks by banks in early months of pandemic led to Covid fraud fiasco
The excessive level of covid fraud during the pandemic in 2020 was caused by weak rules and a lack of guardrails, exacerbated by the UK government ‘abandoning’ the normal procurement framework at the start of the pandemic.
In a damning 110-page report, Tom Hayhoe, the government’s covid counter fraud commissioner, has set out a litany of failures which led to the multibillion pound fraud and abuse during the pandemic.
The amount of covid related fraud amounted to £10.9bn, with schemes from bounce back loans to eat out to help out, the furlough scheme to self employed income support scheme, not to mention the endless local authority grants and eye-watering over spends and abuse of questionable PPE contracts all contributing to high levels of fraud.
