Recommendation 10

We asked Cabinet Office about fraud and error risks outside the tax and benefits system. Cabinet Office told us that the diversity of risks is “very, very large”, because government spends £850 billion and collects around £800 billion in income. It explained that this covers all the different grants, procurement, and services that the public sector offers, which have a range of different fraud risks.28 Cabinet Office explained that the COVID-19 response has changed the fraud risk profile for many departments who are now exposed to higher levels of risk and loss than they had experienced previously.29 It acknowledged that it still needs to do more work to understand the broader fraud and error picture outside the remit of DWP and HMRC.30