Only one per cent of the estimated £1.1billion of taxpayer cash lost to fraudulent or erroneous grants paid to businesses during the pandemic has been recovered, Whitehall’s spending watchdog has said. The former Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) initially did not require pre-payment checks when it started the handouts to firms that said they were hit by lockdowns in March 2020.
Some 90 per cent of the losses due to error and fraud arose during the first wave of Covid-19 grant schemes, the National Audit Office (NAO) said in a new report. Checks and improved data reduced the risk in later iterations.
Just under five per cent of the £22.6bn distributed to businesses between March 2020 and March 2022 was lost. Only £11.4million, or 1%, had been clawed back by last month.
