The Treasury will spend £25m on a 'fraud squad' aimed at recovering funds wrongly given out in Covid-19 support schemes, with hopes the team will be up and running by the summer.
The government’s apparent lack of long-term plan to recover overdue debt issued via its £47bn Covid-19 business loan scheme means fraudsters could “walk away with billions of taxpayers’ money”,...
The resignation of former Treasury minister Lord Agnew highlights the need for public bodies to put in place robust anti-corruption measures, says Richard Lloyd-Bithell.
Local authorities in England have urged residents to remain vigilant over cold calling scams linked to the £150 energy rebates that councils are overseeing this year.
Essex County Council is set to invest £1m to help improve its cyber security, after experts warned of heightened risks of Russian interference in public bodies.
Transparency International’s 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index shows a worrying trend among advanced economies. What are the lessons for public sector finance professionals?
The level of fraud in the government’s Covid-19 loan schemes is around £1.5bn less than previously forecast, according to senior officials at the British Business Bank.
The former Cabinet Office and Treasury minister who resigned in January over the government’s measures to tackle fraud in Covid-19 loan schemes yesterday told MPs that officials and...
Lord Agnew’s dramatic resignation as a minister on the floor of the House of Lords has brought into sharp focus some of the actions the government needs to take on counter fraud.
The UK government seems to have decided it is easier to recoup money paid out in error to the poorest in society than from Covid-19 support scheme fraudsters, says George Turner.
The Treasury has written off the possibility of recovering most of the money lost to fraud and error during the pandemic, according to official documents.
The agency administering housing benefit on behalf of the Northern Irish government has had its 2020-21 accounts qualified over “material levels” of fraud and error, according to the...
A government anti-fraud team has recovered more than £1bn from tax offenders and criminals in the five years since it was set up, according to HM Revenue and Customs.
A councillor responsible for overseeing Covid-19 relief for small businesses fraudulently applied for a £10,000 hardship grant for an inoperative pizza restaurant he owned, a court has found.
Concerns raised by a senior Northern Irish civil servant over fraud and error in a Covid-19 support scheme eventually came to pass as a result of the extreme pace of development, according to the...
Fraud and error in pandemic support programmes have led to head of the National Audit Office Gareth Davies qualifying his opinion on the 2020-21 accounts of the Department for Business, Energy and...