Covid anti-fraud team not worth the money, says HMRC

HM REVENUE & Customs is closing a taskforce set up to reclaim £4.5bn of Covid fraud after admitting the division was not good value for money.

The Taxpayer Protection Taskforce was set up to combat fraud in the Government’s Covid financial support schemes. It is thought £3.5bn was lost to abuse of the furlough scheme, £1bn to support for the self-employed and £71m in Eat Out to Help Out.

The vast majority is believed to have been syphoned off by opportunistic fraudsters or claimed in error. But in a letter yesterday, Jim Harra, HMRC chief executive, told the Treasury that operating a taskforce dedicated to recovering the billions of pounds lost through fraud and error “does not provide the best value for the taxpayer”.

Under HMRC plans, the taskforce will be wound down from March. By September, tackling money wrongly claimed from Covid financial support schemes will come under the remit of “business-as-usual compliance teams”.

It is believed that £4.5bn was misallocated by HMRC over the lifetime of the support schemes.

HMRC has come under criticism from the Treasury and also the public accounts committee of MPS as it expects to have recouped just £1.1bn by the time the taskforce is wound down in September – a quarter of the total, leaving billions unaccounted for.