The hearing was called following a damning report by the National Audit Office last month criticising the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) weak internal management of fraud prevention and low levels of recovery. This sees ‘relatively few’ fraud cases resulting in recovery of financial losses, the NAO found, with only a miniscule 0.004% of the annual £60bn budget is clawed back, the NAO found.

Three of the top civil servants at the MoD, and the acting chief of the military police were all called up to defend the department’s counter fraud work and justify high level of frauds.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (pictured), chair of the influential Public Accounts Committee (PAC) challenged the senior civil servants about ‘high expenditure, complex procurement and a work force split between the armed forces and the civil service’.

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