According to a newly published report, a large portion of the £10.9 billion lost by taxpayers due to fraud and errors in Covid support plans is now “irrecoverable.” Covid Fraud Commissioner Tom Hayhoe said that the response to the pandemic “led to a massive waste of public money, leaving many organisations unprepared.”
According to the BBC, Tom Hayhoe blamed the lack of preparation on public bodies for the fraudulent use of public funds. This colleague should have also said: How were public bodies supposed to be prepared? When public bodies spend public money, they should feel like they’re spending their own money and spend it accordingly. But since it’s easy to spend other people’s money, public bodies may have deliberately chosen to be caught off guard.
Some of the £10.9 billion also went to businesses. Small, large, and medium-sized businesses that received government money didn’t repay the money they received, and some of the money they received went abroad. Meanwhile, it was also revealed that a significant portion of the PPE imported by the government from abroad was also imported at exorbitant prices, and that millions were funneled to unknown US companies.
As a result, the billions of pounds lost will never be returned, and the public will continue to be robbed by the mistakes made by public institutions, whether knowingly or unknowingly.
If government institutions fail to consider spending public money as if they were spending their own, similar thefts will continue.