Loans to cost British taxpayers 'billions'

British taxpayers have been robbed of billions of pounds by "an unacceptable level of mistakes, waste, loss and openings for fraudsters" in the government's COVID-19 support program for businesses, a leading member of Parliament has said.

Meg Hillier, who chairs the influential Public Accounts Committee, or PAC, said that paying off the costs of the pandemic so far would take at least the next 20 years, and that the government should be held accountable to taxpayers who will foot the bill, because of a scenario that combined existing weaknesses in the system with a "lack of preparedness and planning".

The Treasury and the whole of government should provide detailed accounts of how money was spent for the benefit of current and future taxpayers who would be "robbed" of billions, she added.

A report published by the National Audit Office last September said that the full cost of all government COVID-19 measures was likely to be close to 370 billion pounds ($503 billion).

While that support helped many companies to survive, huge amounts of public money were also lost through error and fraud, with the furlough job retention program, where the government supported the wages of workers when they were not working, estimated to have lost around 5.3 billion pounds.

"The estimated loss to fraud and error across all COVID-19 response measures is not known but is expected to be at least 15 billion pounds across the scheme and loans implemented by HM Revenue& Customs, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy," the PAC said.

Hillier said that the government had a public duty to explain what had been allowed to happen, account for the money lost, and explain how it would be reclaimed, and at what further cost.

"Crucially this must ensure lessons are learned for when the next big crisis hits－be it climate, health or financial," she added.

A Treasury spokesperson rejected the claim that defrauded money had been written off, said measures were in place to recover more of it, and defended the role that government support had played during the pandemic.

"Our COVID support schemes were rolled out at a time of national crisis, protecting millions of jobs and businesses when they needed it most," they said.

"Thanks to the speed and scale of our intervention, the economy is back to pre-pandemic levels and growing at the fastest rate in the G7.The cost of inaction could have had a catastrophic impact on jobs and livelihoods."