Covid fraud cost each adult £1,000

Covid related fraud cost every UK adult the equivalent of up to £1,000, figures show.

The analysis, carried out by Oxford University’s Centre for Evidence Based Medicine, reveals the bill for pandemic counter measures, such as furlough and Track and Trace amounted to £370 billion. This equates to an average cost of £10,000 to each UK adult. Approximately ten percent of this spend was lost to fraud, mainly through government loan schemes, which allowed businesses to borrow tens of thousands of pounds to keep them afloat amid rolling lockdowns.

The loans, distributed by high street lenders, were 100 percent guaranteed by the government meaning losses, including any due to defaults or fraud, are being covered by the taxpayer.

The news follows revelations from anti-corruption charity Transparency International UK that there were signs of corruption in contracts worth over £15.3billion awarded by the Conservative government during the Covid pandemic, equivalent to one in every £3 spent. The charity found 135 ‘high risk’ contracts with at least three red flags – warning signs of misconduct. Twenty eight contracts worth £4.1 billion went to firms with known political connections, while 51 worth £4 bn went through a “VIP lane” for companies recommended by MP’s and peers, a practice the High Court ruled was unlawful.

Professor Carl Heneghan, Director of Oxford University’s Centre of Evidence Based Medicine said:

“In the context of the billions of pounds being clawed back by government to fill the £22 billion financial black hole it has identified which includes the raid on pensioners winter fuel payments it would be far more effective to recoup the billions of pounds lost to covid fraud. It is unacceptable to spend and waste so much money and to lose so much to fraud because – like spending on a credit card – there comes a time when you have to pay it back and we will be paying it back for some time.

He added:

“Why is there such inertia in government when it comes to recovering huge amounts of money which would fix many of the problems in our economy.”

Professor David Livermore, a former government public health director called for an “urgent investigation” into covid fraud.

A spokesman for the government’s Treasury department said it was advertising for an anti-corruption Tsar to claw back money lost to covid fraud. However Professor Robert Dingwall, former government advisor on pandemic preparedness, said:

“The rush to buy PPE seems to have led to a weakening of controls over the proper use of taxpayers’ money. The proposed anti-corruption csar will have plenty of work to do in chasing down fraud. Of course a lot of this cash will have wafted into offshore accounts and will be almost impossible to recover. Ironically, it is still an open question how useful any of this kit was, apart from providing psychological reassurance to health and social care workers.”

A Conservative spokesperson said: “Government policy was in no way influenced by the donations the party received.”