THE UK government lost almost £11 billion of public money to fraud during the Covid pandemic, a new report has found.

The Covid Counter Fraud Commissioner’s final report to Parliament, published on Tuesday, found that £10.9bn had been lost to Covid fraudsters, with the UK Government only having recouped around £400 million.

Commissioner Tom Hayhoe found that many of the Tory government’s schemes, including Bounce Back Loans and Eat Out to Help Out, were rolled out with “huge fraud risks and no early safeguards”.

Weak accountability, bad quality data, and poor contracting were identified as the primary causes of the £10.9bn loss – which the Labour-run UK Government said was enough to “fund daily free school meals for the UK’s 2.7 eligible million children for eight years”.

Hayhoe sa

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