Speeches by McKinnell.

“To go back to the Treasury, how are you incentivising Departments to prioritise this? It is a matter of prioritisation.”

“When will a target be determined? Presumably, it would be helpful to have a target to work towards, or it certainly seems to have proven helpful in the past.”

“Sorry, I mean the value of the error. If much of that is error, it amounts to quite a significant amount of money.”

“Do you have a value for that 68%?”

“That is really helpful—thank you. Obviously that is the lion’s share, but the second largest is DBT. Have you undergone a similar process and are you pursuing a quantitative approach to identify where the largest and highest risk factors are, in terms of the quantity and the value of fraud, or is it more of a qualitati…”

“And what was the figure that you have just given me?”

“So it is a quantitative assessment rather than a qualitative one.”

““The possibility of collecting better data”? Is that not a requirement?”

“When you say “partners in the sector”, do you mean local authorities?”

“Can you clarify something that you said? There is still quite a significant gap between the bounce back loans that have been detected as fraudulent and the amounts recovered. When you say 68%, do you mean in financial value or do you mean in the number of loans?”

“Why has that not been done before now?”

“MHCLG is in a slightly different situation: its review outcome is “unverifiable”. Do you want to explain what your Department is doing, Chris?”

“That is really helpful—thank you. Did you want to contribute from DHSC, Elizabeth?”

“What is the 68%, then?”

“Oh, gosh. We are just talking about the fraud and error—”

“The family of a terminally ill constituent contacted me in desperation last month after trying to resolve the pension issues of their family member since January. She died yesterday, with her pension still unresolved. Can the Minister be more specific for that family about what will be done to resolve this issue? It is…”

“I think we are coming to that, so in the interests of time I will hand over, but you will have an opportunity.”

“Ah, so where are you on the financial value that you are recovering—the £1.62 billion not yet recovered? It is a significant amount.”

“My first questions are to Tom and Mark. In its response to the covid counter-fraud commissioner’s report, the Treasury noted that the Public Sector Fraud Authority assessed that covid-19 spending attributed to fraud and error could be even greater than the £10.9 billion that has been quoted. This is probably a question…”

“How confident are you that we have the full extent of the potential loss? Are you confident in those assessments? Are you confident that each Department has maximised its ability to detect where that fraud might have occurred? What is the range for that £10.9 billion figure that you are working with?”