HM Revenue and Customs has produced a revised estimate for fraud and error in its coronavirus support schemes that indicates the total will be between £3.2 bn and £6.4 bn – with the “most likely” figure being £4.5 bn. The figures, contained in the department’s annual report and accounts for 2021-22, combine the lifetime projections for the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme and the Eat Out to Help Out scheme.
The estimates are a reduction on earlier figures – which at one stage were as high as £8 bn. But the level of fraud and error in the schemes is cited by National Audit Office head Gareth Davies as one of the core reasons HMRC’s resource accounts have been given qualified sign-off this year.
Eat Out to Help Out has the highest-projected fraud and error rate of the three programmes, at 8.5%. The rate for the furlough scheme is given as 5% and 3.6% for SEISS. In an update on tackling fraud and error in the Covid support schemes, published on the same day as its annual report and accounts, HMRC said the programmes had helped millions of people and businesses through the pandemic. “The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme helped to pay the wages of people in 11.7 million jobs and nearly 3 million self-employed workers received a Self-Employment Income Support Scheme grant,” it said.
HMRC said its Fraud Investigation Service had made a total of 26 arrests involving the CJRS, SEISS and Eat Out to Help Out in 2021-2022, while its Taxpayer Protection Service had opened almost 41,000 one-to-one compliance interventions as of March this year. It said the task force now had 1,100 staff and was treating fraud in Covid-19 schemes as a “major priority”.
