Recommendation 6

DHSC failed to adequately protect the taxpayer from fraud in the Managed Quarantine Service (MQS), and is not pursuing the fraud that it has identified vigorously enough. There was substantial fraud against the MQS programme. At 1 March 2022, DHSC was owed £74 million in unpaid bills. This includes £21 million of refunds issued but DHSC does not know how much of these were fraudulent and how much was from people who were not satisfied with the service they had paid for. DHSC has only investigated two cases of fraud and has shown limited interest in pursuing more, citing the small amount of money involved in individual cases. Between February 2021 and September 2021 people could self-certify that they were suffering financial hardship to avoid paying upfront. But DHSC also does not know to what extent its system for claiming financial hardship was abused. By May 2022, DHSC has recovered, or has plans to recover, £20 million of £54 million of debt from people using the hardship scheme. Recommendation: DHSC should write to the Committee as part of its Treasury Minute response setting out: • how much of the fraud and unpaid MQS bills it has recovered, how much it has written off, and how it plans to recover the outstanding amount; • how much of the outstanding amount is due to fraud, unpaid hardship plans and other reasons; • how much of the debts arising from the hardship plan are owed by people who self-certified hardship; • how much it has spent collecting unpaid MQS bills; and 8 Managing cross-border travel during the COVID-19 pandemic • how many fraud cases it has identified, investigated and successfully prosecuted.