Time to hunt down the Covid fraudsters

MARGARET Thatcher famously once noted: “Pennies don’t fall from Heaven, they have to be earned here on Earth.”

It was the attitude to taxpayers’ money where every penny taken out of people’s pockets and spent by the state had to be justified and accounted for which enabled her to turn this great country round from being the sick man of Europe to a world power again.

Clearly the heirs to Baroness Thatcher need to be reminded of her legacy and beliefs.

It is wrong for a Conservative government to preside over an enormous amount of Covid fraud which has cost the taxpayer an estimated £37billion and probably much more.

To put this in context, that £37billion is even more than the money which is set to be raised in the first three years from the National Insurance hike – or NHS levy – which comes into force onwednesday.

This is an eyewatering reality given the appalling cost-of-living crisis, inflation and the hike in energy bills.

And we cannot even guarantee that the latest raid on people’s hard-earned cash will be spent efficiently or properly.

There needs to be an understanding, though, that the coronavirus crisis was unprecedented and there was a need to get money to people quickly.

This of course opened the door to the greedy and the opportunists to abuse the system, as every form of benefit or source of government funding risks doing.

But now it has happened we should not write off this enormous sum of money as simply lost and irretrievable.

The Government must put resources into raking back the taxpayers’ money and bring those responsible for such major fraud to justice.

It was depressing that Lord Agnew felt that he had to resign as the Government’s anti-fraud minister to force this issue back to the top of the agenda, and now the Prime Minister needs to act.

He, Chancellor Rishi Sunak, all the ministers and civil servants need to remember it is not their money. It belongs to the people of this country and must be used properly.