A phenomenal fraud

NO doubt eagle-eyed readers will note from my letter ‘Was Corbyn so wrong?’, dated October 12, that I made a mistake.

I inadvertently said that Corbyn wanted to privatise the rail service.

To the contrary I meant to have written that he wanted to nationalise the rail service and with the aim to also reduce extortionate rail fares charged to commuters.

A genuine mistake. However my genuine mistake is totally insignificant compared to what the media has recently reported, unless this is also a mistake.

This regards the apparent numerous fraudulent grants claims made during the lockdown with and paid with ease and without hardly, if any, scrutiny of evidence of the applications, and paid within days.

The media first quoted the sum of fraudulent payments of £3.5 billion pounds, rising to £10 billion, and now quoted standing at £26 billion. It is also suggested that the taxpayer will have to foot this cost.

This is against a backdrop of millions of self-employed people and those in-between jobs at the time of the first lockdown who were given little or no financial support.

It is sad to see many people telling their situation on the news. The Chancellor at the time said it was unfortunate but many people would fall through the cracks. Obviously not the ones creating a phenomenal fraud if the media investigations are right.

Where is the ministerial accountability in all this? One would assume that the Chancellor, a public servant and second highest position in the Cabinet, would confirm, deny or clarify the situation especially if the media are mistaken. If this is the situation in respect of the sums paid out where is the plan to recoup this money and take serious criminal proceedings against those who have committed this fraud on such a wide scale and scope?

It is especially sad when the honourable Marcus Rashford has to go back to the Prime Minister to ask for an extension to provide children in poverty with free meals.

A robust system of checking and validating applications for grants could have saved the country billions of pounds, and diverting this to those in great need including children from very poor backgrounds, as well as financial support to our excellent NHS staff, care workers and key workers.

Dave Bonomi