Recommendation 23

DHSC allowed people facing financial hardship to stay in quarantine hotels or buy tests without paying upfront. At 1 March 2022, DHSC was owed around £54 million from people who have not paid their bill. DHSC allowed people to self-certify financial hardship until September 2021, after which it introduced a formal process that required people to demonstrate severe financial hardship.40 It claimed that it had not been able to put more stringent requirements in place as the MQS was introduced quickly and its priority had been to ensure that the service was available. It did not know whether claims for hardship decreased after the checks on eligibility were introduced.41 The NAO reported that DHSC let a £2 million contract with Qualco to collect the debt. We asked the Department how much of the £54 million owed had been recovered and how much more it expected to recover. DHSC confirmed that it had not published any data on the amount of debt recovered but agreed to do so on an ongoing basis. It told us that, at the date of our session on 23 May 2022, it had recovered, or had arrangements in place to recover, £20 million from people using the hardship scheme.42