Recommendation 20

We asked BEIS about efforts to estimate the level of fraud and error in the Bounce Back Loan Scheme. BEIS told us it has commissioned PwC to undertake a sampling exercise to come up with a specific estimate of fraud which it expects to be completed in May 2021. BEIS explained that this exercise is taking time as it pulls together a lot of data sources to identify high-risk loans and that working through GDPR consequences, for 41 Government Counter Fraud Function, Cross-Government Fraud Landscape Bulletin 2019-20, February 2021 42 C&AG Guide’s, page 7 43 Letter from Mark Cheeseman, page 1–2 44 Q 33; Cabinet Office, Cross-Government Fraud Landscape Annual Report 2019, February 2020 45 C&AG Guide’s, page 7 46 C&AG Guide’s, page 12-13 47 Q 54 48 Letter from Jim Harra, 7 May 2021 49 Committee of Public Accounts, Department for Work and Pensions Accounts 2019–20, Twenty-Sixth Report of Session 2019–21, HC 681, 18 November 2020 50 Qq 57- 59 Fraud and Error 15 example, “takes care and effort and needs to be done right”. BEIS told us that the interim work performed to date demonstrated that the number of loans that it can pick out as being “absolutely fraud” is “really quite small” and that working through the subtleties that sit behind each application is “not an easy job”.51