Matthew Lynn Matthew Lynn

When will Covid fraud catch up with Rishi Sunak? 

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Remember Rishi-mania? It came around the time of the ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme, which was designed to help the restaurant trade recover from the Covid lockdowns. As chancellor, Sunak won over stomachs –­­ and hearts – with his generous financial scheme to help everybody through the crisis. Cometh the hour, cometh the Treasury. 

But it is now quite clear that hundreds of millions, even billions, of pounds were stolen from the taxpayer through these schemes. And for all his supposed competence as a technocratic administrator, in reality, Sunak presided over fraud on an unprecedented scale. It may be just a matter of time before this massive scandal catches up with him.   

Sunak, a notorious hard worker, excels at exuding an air of professionalism and efficiency. It’s how he became Prime Minister – admittedly only once all the other contenders had been eliminated. Even now he is regarded by the markets as a tough-minded former banker. And yet the details emerging of the epic scale of fraud committed during the pandemic are disturbing, to put it mildly. Giving evidence to the Treasury Select Committee yesterday, HMRC chief executive Jim Herra admitted that at least £4.5 billion had been lost to fraud through three Covid schemes — furlough, help for the self-employed and ‘Eat Out to Help Out’. Of that total, Herra only expects £1.1 billion to be recovered. Many of the companies hardly even bothered to cover their tracks. Herra pointed to one restaurant that was reporting record sales while its staff were furloughed. But, heck, who cared? Everyone was getting paid. 

The government’s pandemic response has created a something-for-nothing culture

The trouble is, it should have been obvious to anyone that there was going to be massive fraud. It is not as if the restaurant trade is famous for the accuracy of its book-keeping.

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Matthew Lynn
Written by
Matthew Lynn
Matthew Lynn is a financial columnist and author of ‘Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis’ and ‘The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031’

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