The National Audit Office’s (NAO) review of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) has sparked headlines focusing on the suggestion that the ‘hasty’ delivery of the scheme caused significant levels of fraud. Such headlines do not give a balanced view of either the comments in the NAO report or the reality of what has happened.

The scheme may have been introduced quickly and caused errors, but the rapidity of the implementation did not necessarily cause significantly more fraud. In fact, the longer people have to find out the mechanics of a scheme like this, the longer they have to work out ways of deliberately circumventing the rules.