Tackling fraud and corruption against government

There are large gaps in government’s understanding of the extent and location of fraud and corruption risks. Most departments are exposed to several types of fraud and corruption risk in their income and spending, but few produce regular, reliable, and comprehensive estimates of the level of fraud and corruption of their risky areas. Government expects the number of fraud measurement experts across public bodies to increase from 99 to around 180. But the current system of fraud measurement does not tell us, beyond the well-known problems in tax and benefits, where the problems are or which public bodies are most affected. Where government does attempt to measure fraud, it often includes more innocent errors because it finds it difficult to establish the intent behind the misinformation provided. Conflating error with fraud can give the impression that government is underestimating and obscuring where the real fraud problems are. PSFA estimates that, for the two thirds of government expenditure where it does not have specific estimates, the level of fraud and error is somewhere between 0.5% and 5% of expenditure. This implies that in addition to the £10 billion of tax fraud and £6.4 billion of benefit fraud last year (2022–23), government lost somewhere between £2.5 billion to £28.5 billion from fraud and error, but it does not know exactly where or how. Recommendation 2: The Public Sector Fraud Authority should publish an annual strategic intelligence report on the level of fraud and corruption across government and where across government’s activities the main risks and issues 1 Q 54 6 Tackling fraud and corruption against government lie. This should build on the previous landscape reports and use better targeted fraud measurement and assurance exercises to provide an overall estimate of the extent and location of fraud and corruption by recognising the difference between fraud and error.

Departmental counter-fraud staff often lack the credibility and authority needed to exert influence at senior levels. Historically, counter-fraud experts have focused on investigating suspected fraud and have not been brought into wider policy making and design. Many departments lack senior counter-fraud professionals with influence in their organisations and counter-fraud staff have often struggled to get the attention, understanding and support needed from senior decision-makers. In part, this is because the counter-fraud profession itself is relatively young and needs time to reinforce itself as a function. But many of those working in the counter- fraud function are not members of the profession and have not been trained or assessed against the professional standards. The Cabinet Office and HM Treasury have said that government will conduct annual workforce and performance reviews to provide insights on areas outside tax and welfare that demand attention and support. HM Treasury, starting with an expectation of a return of £3 for every £1 spent, also says that it will, where possible, expect increasing returns on its counter- fraud investments. Recommendation 3: The Public Sector Fraud Authority should: a) update the Committee in 12 months on the outcomes of its next annual Workforce and Performance Review and whether public bodies start to invest the right amount in their counter-fraud and corruption capability and achieve value for money from their efforts. b) set out what it has done to address any identified weaknesses in the effectiveness of departments’ efforts to tackle fraud and corruption, including their understanding of risks, resourcing of counter-fraud and delivery of counter-fraud outcomes.

Government has often failed to implement basic counter-fraud measures into its new initiatives. Government’s COVID-19 response highlighted the importance of designing counter-fraud measures, including controls, reporting and recovery, into new initiatives at an early stage of the policy cycle. Government could have maintained several basic standards of public accountability, even at the height of the COVID-19 emergency: more transparency; better management of conflicts of interest; promptness in addressing known fraud risks; and timely financial reporting. Some lessons learnt have already been put into practice, for example, in the case of government’s energy schemes where customers received discounted bills from the suppliers rather than direct cash payments from government. Government’s introduction of the Initial Fraud Impact Assessments (IFIAs) is a welcome development that will help public bodies address known vulnerabilities sooner. HM Treasury intends to embed the IFIAs into its spending approval processes. It has trained 700 of its staff on matters relating to fraud. Tackling fraud and corruption against government 7 Recommendation 4: HM Treasury should: a) confirm, in its Treasury Minute response, how it plans to embed Initial Fraud Impact Assessments (IFIAs) within its formal departmental spending approval processes; and the consequences for public bodies if they do not meet its expectations. b) work with departments, as part of its existing work to share best practice with departments, to help them use IFIAs to inform Accounting Officer Assessments and to ensure that a summary of the IFIAs, where they flag significant risks, is included in the published summary Accounting Officer Assessments sent to the Committee.

Government is not generating enough of a deterrence effect from pursuing those that commit fraud against the public purse. Most of government’s investigatory and enforcement capability sits in HM Revenue & Customs and DWP. PSFA will in due course set up a central enforcement unit. Some departments have the choice of referring a fraud they detect for prosecution or applying a civil penalty, normally with a lower burden of proof and lower fine. The latter can offer a more cost-effective route to investigate fraud and recover funds, but may not offer the same deterrent effect. Government has not set out the level of prosecutions and convictions for fraud that it wants to achieve in order to produce an effective preventive deterrent. Departments are also not yet able to demonstrate that they have the right balance between civil and criminal sanctions to achieve both the optimal recovery of funds and a deterrent effect. Government can do more to increase transparency on the extent of prosecutions to highlight the consequences of committing fraud, deter people from committing fraudulent activities, and reassure the public that fraud and corruption does not go unpunished. Recommendation 5: The Public Sector Fraud Authority, in collaboration with other departments, should develop a cross-government communication strategy for highlighting government’s efforts in pursuing fraudsters and the effectiveness of counter-fraud measures. It should, in the Treasury Minute, confirm it will oversee the implementation of this strategy.

It is very unlikely that most of the losses due to fraud and corruption will ever be recovered. While fraud detection levels are rising, a large gap still remains between the estimated underlying levels of fraud and amounts detected. In 2020–21, while PSFA estimated fraud and error losses between £3.5 billion and £29.1 billion excluding tax and welfare fraud, government only detected £243 million of fraud. Government also only ever recovers a small minority of this detected fraud. For example, in 2020– 21, only £29 million of the £243 million detected fraud was recovered. Enforcement and recovery powers are also fragmented across government. The Cabinet Office and HM Treasury say they will continue to try to recover as much of the £21 billion lost during the pandemic as possible, and will not write off any amounts, but accept that it is unlikely they will be able to recover most of it. But while it is too late to prevent this fraud and most will never be recovered, government could do more to retrieve what it can. HM Treasury has committed an additional £900 million to 8 Tackling fraud and corruption against government the Department for Work & Pensions on which it expects a return of £9 billion by 2027–28 through improved general compliance. It has not invested similar amounts to tackle fraud in the other departments. Recommendation 6: HM Treasury should work with departments to help them recover as much of the money paid out to fraudsters as possible and set out in the Treasury Minute: • its expectation of the extent of departments’ recovery of losses due to fraud; • the return on investment it expects from money spent on recovery; and • why it is not investing more money to recover more.

Central government often relies on local government to manage fraud risks on its behalf but does little to support local authorities’ capability to do so. For example, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy required local authorities to pursue any losses from error and fraud they identify arising from payments in COVID-19 business grant schemes. However, as all recovered monies must be paid back to central government, local authorities have had no financial incentive to go beyond the minimum required action to identify losses. And only a small proportion of the estimated losses, £21 million out of an estimated £1.1 billion, has been recovered so far. Central government has tried to provide some support to local authorities, for example, local authorities were provided with around £200 million for the cost of administering the schemes, and local authorities have been able to make use of the data matching functionality of the National Fraud Initiative to counter fraud. But the different governance architecture in place across local government has added a layer of complexity to the interactions of central and local government. Local government bodies have also struggled to maintain timely financial reporting. The Treasury agreed to speak to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities officials about what more can be done to support local authorities manage the risk of fraud and corruption in their spending. Recommendation 7: HM Treasury should set out, in its Treasury Minute response: a) how it plans to understand the challenges for local government counter- fraud work. b) what support central government plans to provide to local government bodies who administer schemes and manage fraud and corruption risks to funds on behalf of central government. Tackling fraud and corruption against government 9 1 The problem

On the basis of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, we took evidence from HM Treasury, Cabinet Office and the Public Sector Fraud Authority (PSFA) about tackling fraud and corruption against government.2

We were interested to hear about how government was demonstrating leadership at the most senior levels on tackling fraud and corruption. HM Treasury explained the steps it is taking to change and embed the counter-fraud culture across the public sector. It has asked every major department to target a return on investment of at least £3 for every £1 spent on counter-fraud.16 It has committed to an investment of £1 billion since the pandemic on tackling fraud, including £900 million on DWP, over the period 2022–23 to 2024–25, from which it expects a return of £9 billion by 2028.17 Cabinet Office brought to our attention that as part of government’s wider investment in tackling fraud and corruption, the number of people working at the PSFA has increased from 60 to 150.18 HM Treasury has also implemented Initial Fraud Impact Assessments (IFIAs) with the intention of designing out fraud at the start of initiatives.19 IFIAs are rapid assessments of potential fraud and corruption risks in policies so that appropriate controls can be designed and put in place before implementation.20 In tandem with the creation of the PSFA, HM Treasury told us that these collective changes are testament to the resolve of government to tackle fraud and corruption.21 Gaps in government’s understanding of fraud and corruption risks

Most departments are exposed to more than one type of fraud risk, while all have exposure to internal fraud and corruption risk.22 However, few departments produce regular, reliable, and comprehensive measurements on the level of fraud and corruption in major areas of their spending.23 PSFA estimates that, for the two-thirds of government expenditure where there are no specific estimates, the level of fraud and error is somewhere between 0.5% and 5% of expenditure.24 This implies that in addition to the £10 billion a year of lost tax revenue from evasion and criminal attacks and £6.4 billion of benefit fraud last year (2022–23), government is losing somewhere in the range of £2.5 billion to £28.5 billion to fraud and error each year across the rest of its expenditure.25 PSFA and its predecessors have run a Fraud Measurement and Assurance (FMA) programme since 2014 to assess the level of fraud and error outside of the few areas, such as tax, welfare and Ministry of Defence (MoD) spending, where there are annual exercises.26

Each FMA exercise covers a specific area of spend and estimates the level of fraud and error in that spending. Since 2014, the FMA programme comprised 62 assessments covering £224 billion of spending. The GCFF’s Oversight Board concluded that 32 of the assessments, representing more than half (57%) of assessed expenditure, produced outcomes that are not reliable.27 When challenged on the value of the counter-fraud function, PSFA told us that the UK is the only country in the world to have a standard on fraud risk assessment. The standard means that all risk assessments across government are comparable and it is clear to what quality they are conducted. The technical advances were 16 Qq 50–51, 61 17 Qq 54, 61, 72 18 Q 44 19 Q 61 20 C&AG’s Report, para 2.5 21 Q 72 22 C&AG’s Report, para 1.17 and Figure 3 23 Q 58; C&AG’s Report, Figure 3 24 C&AG’s Report, para 1.16 25 C&AG Report, Figures 1 and 6; Fraud and error in the benefit system: financial year 2022 to 2023 estimates 26 C&AG’s Report, para 1.12–1.15 27 C&AG’s Report, para 1.15–1.16 12 Tackling fraud and corruption against government made possible through counter-fraud practitioners working as a function.28 PSFA told us that the reason all assessments conducted since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic were deemed to be unreliable was the scale and complexity of the schemes, which in tandem with the inherent difficulties associated with fraud measurement, resulted in shortcomings against the fraud measurement standard. For example, the Department of Health and Social Care’s assessment of the level of fraud in its procurement of PPE was not based on a fully random sample and could not be extrapolated.29 We asked PSFA about the reliability of the MoD’s estimate that 4.8% of its annual procurement spend is fraudulent. PSFA explained that MoD, in the absence of a random sampling exercise, had to rely on benchmarks from academic research, and therefore its estimate does not come with a high level of confidence. The most

HM Treasury told us that to improve government’s fraud measurement capability, the number of fraud measurement experts will be doubling from 99 to about 180 across government.31 PSFA told us that it would not advocate departments to conduct fraud measurement exercises in all the areas where there are currently gaps because that would be too expensive and complicated.32 For example, DWP and HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) spend £22 million each year on measuring fraud and error in the welfare and tax systems.33 PSFA told us that it will mainly focus its efforts on fraud risk assessments and outcomes from counter-fraud work to prevent and detect fraud.34 We asked PSFA about the conflation of fraud and error, and what plans, if any, it had to separate them as they are different concepts with different public perceptions. PSFA explained that differentiating between fraud and error requires an assessment of intent, which is not always practical to undertake in large scale fraud measurement exercises. It told us that when public bodies have “established vulnerabilities, the response that we may use would not look just at error or fraud” because both often require the same preventive approach.35 Professionalisation of government’s counter-fraud workforce

In 2018, Cabinet Office established the GCFF, which in turn launched a set of Counter Fraud Functional Standards to set out minimum expectations for how government organisations should manage their fraud and corruption risks. In October 2018, government also launched the GCFP to support the development of capability for counter- fraud professionals across government. The GCFP grants membership to the profession based on the evaluation of knowledge and skills codified by the GCFP standards.36 We asked PSFA about the impact of introducing government counter-fraud functional and professional standards. PSFA told us that the functional standards have provided the public with transparency on the basics of what they can expect public bodies to do to 28 Qq 23, 79 29 Qq 18–19; C&AG’s Report, para 1.20 30 Qq 40, 42; C&AG’s Report, para 1.14 and 1.16 31 Q 18 32 Qq 31, 56, 58 33 Q 31; C&AG’s Report, para 19 34 Q 58 35 Qq 29–30; C&AG’s Report, para 1.9 36 C&AG’s Report, para 2.5 Tackling fraud and corruption against government 13 counter fraud and corruption. PSFA’s assessments prior to the onset of the pandemic suggested that use of and compliance with the functional standards was on the increase. It plans to repeat its assessments to establish recent trends. On the professional standards, PSFA explained that they have led to an upskilling of the counter-fraud practitioners across government by sharing with them the available skills, knowledge and experience of the profession. PSFA told us that, internationally, the UK is the first country in the world to have a counter-fraud profession, as well as the first to have a professional standard for fraud prevention.37

However, PSFA recognised that there is further work to be done on developing the counter-fraud profession. There are over 13,000 members of the counter-fraud function across government, around 84% of whom work for DWP or HMRC. Less than 45% of counter-fraud practitioners are members of the GCFP.38 HM Treasury told us that the aim is for 3,000 more people to be members of the GCFP in the next three years.39 PSFA explained that historically counter-fraud practitioners were not always able to demonstrate a wider understanding of the business context in which they operated. There is also evidence that many departments lack senior counter-fraud professionals with influence in their organisations.40 Cabinet Office highlighted the fact that the counter-fraud function is a relatively young function compared to more established functions, such as, HR, finance and commercial. The counter-fraud discipline needs time to reinforce itself as a function, a profession, and “a key way of doing business in government”.41

In 2021, HM Treasury commissioned GCFF to undertake a Workforce and Performance Review (WPR) to map the counter-fraud resources and delivery outcomes of 70 central government organisations.42 HM Treasury and Cabinet Office said that the WPR exercise will now be an annual undertaking to enable government to focus on areas, particularly outside the tax and welfare systems, most in need of improvements.43 HM Treasury explained that in return for its investment in government’s counter-fraud capability, and to encourage a culture change in public bodies’ attitudes towards tackling fraud and corruption, it will ask for organisations to achieve, or work towards, a return of £3 for every £1 they spend on counter-fraud activities.44 PSFA told us that a 3 to 1 return on investment is a “reasonable place to start” but expectations will have to be tailored to reflect the risk profile of organisations.45 37 Qq 17, 34–36 38 Q 17; C&AG’s Report, Figure 10 39 Q 38 40 Q 49; C&AG’s Report, para 3.8 41 Q 50 42 C&AG’s Report, para 2.11 43 Qq 39, 48 44 Q 65 45 Qq 66–67 14 Tackling fraud and corruption against government 2 Government’s response Designing out fraud and corruption

Government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic underlined the need to design counter-fraud measures, including controls, reporting and recovery, into new initiatives at an early stage of the policy cycle. Government could have maintained several basic standards of public accountability to minimise opportunities for fraud and corruption. It could have: increased transparency to parliament and the public; better managed conflicts of interest; promptly addressed known vulnerabilities; and ensured timely financial reporting.46 The Public Sector Fraud Authority (PSFA) recognised the imperative to build in fraud and corruption controls when new schemes are introduced. HM Treasury and the PSFA told us that government, to achieve its aim of designing out fraud from the start, has now introduced Initial Fraud Impact Assessments (IFIAs), which are embedded within HM Treasury’s formal spending approval processes.47 IFIAs are rapid initial assessments of the likely fraud risks in new major spending initiatives.48 HM Treasury told us that 700 of its staff have been trained on matters relating to fraud to ensure they are able to fulfil their responsibilities on scrutinising departmental IFIAs.49

PSFA also informed us that it would soon launch its ‘risk, threat and prevention service’, which it wants to provide departments with further support on early risk assessments.50 The Cabinet Office made an announcement on 24 May, shortly after our evidence session, confirming the launch of this new team and that it was starting work immediately.51 PSFA brought to our attention the work of a cross-government ‘tiger team’ of experts, which undertook IFIAs and fraud risk assessments, and provided initial prevention advice on government’s energy schemes.52 HM Treasury told us that some of the lessons learned from government’s experience of administering the COVID-19 schemes have already informed the design of some new initiatives to minimise fraud. For example, government, in its energy schemes, used discounted energy bills, administered by the energy suppliers, to provide support to those in need rather than giving out cash up front.53 Deterrence

Detecting and pursuing fraudsters and corrupt officials is important for the provision of justice, to provide intelligence on the types of fraud and corruption occurring and to act as a deterrent for others.54 Cabinet Office told us it is the intention of government to step up its enforcement activities, and in a very public and transparent way, to demonstrate to people the consequences of fraud. Under the new Procurement Bill, if passed by Parliament, government can bar people from taking part in public procurement if they have committed fraud. There is also scope to disqualify people as company directors. 46 C&AG’s Report, para 1.23 and 3.10 47 Qq 32, 34, 61 48 C&AG‘s Report, para 26 49 Q 62 50 Q 34 51 www.gov.uk/government/news/new-specialist-fraud-squad-to-help-departments-prevent-fraud-in-public- services 52 Qq 46, 70; C&AG’s Report, para 2.5 53 Qq 71, 82 54 C&AG’s Report, para 3.11 Tackling fraud and corruption against government 15 Cabinet Office explained that these examples, alongside the other sanctions available to government, are part of a plan to create an environment in which people are deterred from committing fraud and the public have confidence in the way government pursues fraudsters.55

On the deterrence effect of convictions and whether there is a sufficient level of convictions to create a suitable deterrent, the PSFA told us that it was not aware of any evidence to indicate what the right level of prosecutions would be to create a deterrent.56 After our evidence session, the Cabinet Office wrote to us providing us with statistics for the main areas of government’s prosecution activity, including HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and Department for Work & Pensions (DWP). Between 2019–20 and 2021–22, HMRC’s criminal investigations had led to the prosecution of 1,090 and the conviction of 983 individuals. Between 2020–21 and 2022–23, DWP referred 1,213 cases to the Crown Prosecution Service or Procurator Fiscal for prosecution, and secured 1,154 convictions.57 While it acknowledged the importance of prosecutions and convictions, the PSFA said it was important to make use of the full suite of interventions available to government in tackling fraud and corruption, for example, better controls, better prevention and better use of data analytics. Cabinet Office told us about the importance of getting the balance between civil and criminal sanctions right. While successful criminal sanctions can create a very strong deterrent effect, they can also be expensive and time-consuming.58 Civil sanctions on the other hand can be discharged more quickly and with a lower burden of proof but may not offer the same deterrent effect.59

DWP and HMRC are the two departments at the front line of the battle against fraud. These departments have their own fraud investigation and enforcement legal powers.60 Cabinet Office told us that the PSFA will itself be setting up an enforcement unit to meet the demand across government for effective civil and criminal enforcement actions.61 Government has neither the ability or capability to detect, investigate and gather sufficient evidence to support a prosecution for all fraud and corruption.62 We asked how government planned to use transparency to make the most of its investigative capabilities. Cabinet Office told us about the importance of annual reporting on fraud, where it occurs, the actions taken in response to it and the outcomes achieved. It is also of vital importance to provide transparency to public on the consequences of fraudsters’ actions, and for organisations to expose themselves to internal and external scrutiny of their counter-fraud and corruption efforts.63 HM Treasury also acknowledged the importance of transparency and celebrating tackling fraud and corruption to deter others.64 55 Qq 5, 93 56 Q 11 57 Letter to the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee from Alex Chisholm, Cabinet Office Permanent Secretary, 25 May 2023 58 Qq 10–11 59 Q 11, C&AG’s Report, para 3.11 60 Q 25; C&AG‘s Report, para 22 61 Qq 25, 55 62 C&AG‘s Report, para 3.11 63 Q 88 64 Q 28 16 Tackling fraud and corruption against government Recovery of losses

Departments have detected an increasing amount of fraud and error outside of tax and welfare expenditure. Cabinet Office has reported that since 2014–15 departments have detected £0.9 billion of fraud.65 It is not, however, possible to tell whether the increase in detected fraud relates to better detection or increased occurrences of fraud.66 PSFA told us that government’s investment in analytical tools and the National Fraud Initiative have contributed to the increasing levels of detected fraud.67 We asked PSFA why government was only detecting a small proportion of the estimated levels of fraud and error outside the tax and welfare systems. In 2020–21, departments and their arm’s-length bodies had detected £243 million of fraud, excluding tax and welfare fraud, while the PSFA had reported between £3.5 billion and £29.1 billion of fraud and error in the same year. PSFA acknowledged the need to investigate the reasons behind the gap between the estimates of fraud and error, and the levels of detected fraud.68

Departments also only recover a minority of the fraud they detect. In 2020–21, departments had recovered £29 million out of the £243 million of detected fraud. Enforcement and recovery powers are also fragmented across government, which exacerbates the challenge government faces to recover fraud losses.69 We asked HM Treasury how much of the £21 billion estimated fraud over the pandemic it expected to recover. HM Treasury told us that DWP and HMRC will have their own specific targets, and the returns on their spending are scrutinised by the Office for Budget Responsibility at fiscal events. HM Treasury and Cabinet Office confirmed that government was not writing off any of the losses associated with fraud during the COVID-19 pandemic period. It was actually increasing its efforts to recover those losses, for example, through its £1 billion investment in counter-fraud capability, but it would not be reasonable to expect government to recover all of the losses.70 Local government

The accountability system between local and central government is complex. This complexity means it can be difficult to identify who is accountable for what.71 Central government often relies on local government to manage fraud risks on its behalf, for example, on grants administered to individuals and businesses. An organisation’s exposure to grant fraud often depends on how specific the grant agreement objectives and outcomes are, and the quality of the post-award monitoring arrangements.72

Between March 2020 and March 2022, local authorities distributed COVID-19 grants costing £22.6 billion via 4.5 million payments to businesses. By October 2022, the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) estimated that error and fraud across all the COVID-19 grant schemes was in the region of £1.1 billion (just under 5% of the value of grants paid to businesses). BEIS required local authorities to 65 Q 37; C&AG‘s Report, para 1.18 66 C&AG’s Report, Figure 5 67 Qq 20, 33 68 Qq 37–38; C&AG’s Report, Figures 1 and 5 69 C&AG’s Report, para 1.18, 3.11 and Figure 5 70 Qq 83, 86 71 C&AG’s Report, Departmental Overview 2019–20: Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, January 2021 72 C&AG’s Report, Tackling fraud and corruption against government, Session 2022–23, HC 1199, 30 March 2023 Tackling fraud and corruption against government 17 pursue any losses from error and fraud they identify arising from payments. However as all recovered monies must be paid back to central government, local authorities have had no financial incentive to identify losses beyond those contained within the BEIS-directed samples used to derive the estimates of error and fraud losses73 Only about 2% of the fraud and error losses, £21 million, had been recovered when we took evidence in May.74 Local authorities are also under considerable pressure to complete their audits. Only 9% of local government bodies received audited accounts for 2020–21 by the extended statutory publication deadline of 30 September 2021 and 12% received audited accounts for 2021–22 by the statutory deadline of 30 November 2022. Against such a background, we asked HM Treasury whether PSFA should be given a wider remit to also cover the management of fraud across local government.75

HM Treasury told us that while it may appear reasonable to extend the PSFA’s remit to also cover local government, there are different governance architectures across central and local government, and any change to the roles and responsibilities of the PSFA would entail “a very large increase” in the mandate of the PSFA and there are no plans to take such a course of action. HM Treasury brought to our attention a cost-sharing agreement that they had agreed with local authorities to provide them with £200 million for the administration of the schemes.76 HM Treasury agreed to engage with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to ascertain what more government could do to support counter-fraud activities in local authorities.77

Cabinet Office and the PSFA told us that while local government does not explicitly fall under their remit, they still provide support to local authorities through various means. Local authorities can make use of the data-matching functionality of the National Fraud Initiative. Local authorities have access to the resources of the counter- fraud profession and members of the profession work in local government. And under the new procurement legislation, people could also be barred from local government procurement.78 HM Treasury, however, confirmed that central government does not monitor local government’s management of fraud and corruption risks.79 73 C&AG’s Report, COVID-19 business grant schemes, Session 2022–23, HC 1200, 24 March 2023, para 7, 12 and 14 74 Committee of Public Accounts, Oral evidence: Local Authority administered COVID grant schemes, HC 1234, 11 May 2023, Qq 13–14 75 Q 92; C&AG’s Report, para 1.23 76 Q 92 77 Q 93 78 Q 93; C&AG’s Report, Figure 10 79 Q 94 18 Tackling fraud and corruption against government