Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 5
5
The Department has yet to set out how it is learning lessons from managing its...
Conclusion
The Department has yet to set out how it is learning lessons from managing its COVID-19 business support schemes to better protect taxpayers’ money Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy Annual Report and Accounts 2020–21 7 in future. The Department now has two years’ worth of experience designing, implementing, and managing COVID-19 business support schemes, and some experience of recovery activities where fraud and error has been identified. It has identified some learning that, for example, has allowed it to refine its approach to identifying fraud and error in COVID-19 business support grants. However, this is to reduce shortcomings in existing schemes, and we would expect to see the Department demonstrating that it is learning wider lessons from these schemes which it could then apply to improve its stewardship of public funds in the future. Several of the Department’s major areas of expenditure in the coming years, such as supporting public sector decarbonisation and achieving net zero, will again require routing taxpayer funds through third parties as it did with COVID-19 business support schemes. We would expect lessons the Department has learned during the pandemic to support the design and delivery of these future schemes. Recommendation: The Department should continue to refine its estimates of the levels of fraud and error across its COVID-19 business support schemes, recovering monies to reduce losses to the public purse and apply any lessons learned from these to future support schemes. It should write to the Committee before the end of the year to set out how it is applying lessons learned in its ongoing activities.
Government Response
Not Addressed
HM Government
Not Addressed
5.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: December 2022 5.2 The department continues to refine its estimates of the levels of fraud and error across its COVID-19 business support schemes, including the COVID-19 loan schemes and grants. 5.3 The department will publish revised estimates for Cohort 1 grants and first estimates for the subsequent schemes in its 2021-22 annual report and accounts due to be published in Autumn 2022. See paragraph 1.4 above. 5.4 As part of the assurance work, the department will write to local authorities with the findings and asking them were relevant to start the debt recovery process. 5.5 The COVID-19 loan schemes are delegated schemes, and primary responsibility for detection, investigation and recovery of fraud sits with lenders, in line with their usual processes. The Cabinet Office's fraud analytics programme aids lenders in this process by improving the information available to them on suspected fraud, which they can use to support their internal investigations and pursue recoveries. 5.6 Meanwhile, the department is working with NATIS, the Insolvency Service and other law enforcement agencies to pursue investigations into fraud in the Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS). At the 2022 Spring Statement, the department secured additional funding for NATIS and the British Business Bank to target abuse of BBLS.