Furlough cash fraud fears raised

The UK Government believes it may have paid out up to £3.5 billion in wrong or fraudulent claims for the furlough scheme.

Jim H arr a, the to pc ivil servant at HMRC, said his staff believe between 5 per cent and 10 per cent of furlough cash might have gone to the wrong places. “We have made an assumption for the purposes of our planning that the error and fraud rate in this scheme could be between 5 per cent and 10 per cent,” the permanent secretary said.

He was speaking yesterday in front of MPS on the Public Accounts Committee.

The Government has so far paid out £35.4bn in furlough cash, according to the latest figures. It means that some - where bet ween£1.75bn and £3.5bn could have been paid out wrongly.

“That will range from deliberate fraud through to error,” he said.

“What we have said in our risk assessment is we are not going to set out to try to find employers who have made legitimate mistakes in compiling their claims.” The Government rolled out the massive scheme at breakneck speed.