Net zero campaign could result in ‘£50bn eco-fraud’

Criminal gangs will exploit the ‘big move to green’ by tricking consumers out of their savings, claims report

“GREEN fraud” will cost Britons £50 billion by 2050 as criminals take advantage of eco-friendly state schemes, according to a leaked report.

Criminal gangs will plunder state handouts and trick consumers out of their savings, as new regulations such as mandated heat pumps force them to fit green upgrades in their homes.

This is according to a dossier from global consultancy firm FTI seen exclusively by this newspaper.

It estimated that 5 per cent of the £1 trillion the Government said was needed to meet its net zero targets by 2050 could be lost to fraud.

Taxpayers will lose between £3.5billion a year and as much as £50 billion over three decades, as criminal gangs cash in on eco-fraud opportunities, the report said.

This will be lost from state-funded schemes but also directly from consumers and private firms.

This was based on the Government’s own estimates of fraud across public sector spending and research by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, a trade body, and the UK Fraud Costs Measurement Committee.

The report added that there would be “huge and avoidable waste of taxpayers’ money” and “fraud on an industrial scale” if there were no robust fraud risk control measures.

The document listed a number of examples of where such fraud had already been committed, including via the recently abandoned £2 billion Green Homes Grant, launched last year, which resulted in scammers abusing its name to proffer their unapproved services on victims.

This comes after it was revealed that at least £6 billion in taxpayer money was lost to fraud via emergency state support schemes such as furlough. The true figure could be far higher, as there are uncertainties over official estimates.

HM Revenue & Customs has set aside more than £100million for a “Taxpayer Protection Task Force” of more than 1,000 officers to recover the funds.

Andrew Durant, of the FTI, and the author of the report, said state schemes for eco-upgrades on homes would be targeted. “The pandemic was a massive opportunity for scammers and we have seen fraud levels soar.

“The big move to green will be where they make their next big push,” he said.

Boris Johnson has already announced no new traditional gas boilers will be sold after 2030, to encourage the use of more costly low-carbon heat pumps.

Savers and pensioners will be at risk, with incidents of scammers convincing victims to transfer money into fake green investment schemes, pushed by record-low interest rates, expected to “skyrocket”, the report added.

However, the Government claimed the figures were “muddled” and that official statistics had been applied “incorrectly” and “conflated”.