Recommendation 21

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