The UK government has lost around £21 billion ($26 billion) due to fraud since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and is “very unlikely” to recover the losses, according to the National Audit Office (NAO).
In its latest report published on March 30, the spending watchdog revealed that the amount of fraud in UK government expenditure rose from a total of £5.5 billion in the two years before the pandemic to £21 billion in total in the following two years.
Of the £21 billion, £7.3 billion relates to the government’s temporary COVID-19 schemes for individuals and businesses, including the £70 billion Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, commonly known as furlough, which supported 11.6 million UK workers over 18 months….