GOVERNMENT CAVALIER ON WASTE SEES DEBT OF OVER £2.3 TRILLION
THE Government is writing off £5bn – equivalent to £1,000 for every adult in Britain – which has gone to fraudsters who claimed Covid support for fake businesses they set up specially to defraud the taxpayer.
It has also written off £8.7bn it spent on protective equipment bought in panic during the pandemic.
This money cannot be raised from day to day taxes, especially given the amount of tax dodging by rich people and corporations which the Government tolerates, and will simply be added to the national debt.
The Foreign Secretary spent £500,000 on flying to Australia by private jet rather than paying 99% less for even a first class seat on one of the many scheduled flights which leave London for Australia each day.
She also spent over £1,000 on a meal for a handful of people at a London restaurant run by a Tory party donor – paid by the taxpayer. (Naturally, that didn’t stop her from voting to cut £20 a week from Universal Credit while food and energy prices soar.)
The Government ran down the NHS stockpile of PPE before the pandemic, then was forced to pay up to 15 times as much for the same items as prices soared during Covid.
A report had been prepared in 2016 raising concerns about the amount of PPE needed by care homes, but the Government ignored this. Several billion pounds worth of PPE bought during the pandemic may now be sent to landfill as unusable, some of it bought without proper scrutiny from party donors who got themselves onto the notorious VIP list.
When the Conservatives came to power in 2010, they inherited a debt of around £759bn, built up over 200 years, and they claimed that Britain was on the brink of a Greece-style financial meltdown if it wasn’t reduced, they said there was no money left.
After 12 years of their leadership, the national debt has trebled to £2,340bn, most of the increase coming before Covid hit because of the Government’s austerity policies. It’s hardly surprising when they are so cavalier about waste.
Phil Tate