The TaxPayers’ Alliance has long called for fraud to be a priority of ministers. Waste is bad enough, but precious resources being misdirected through criminal means makes a mockery of the record-high tax burden households are currently paying. And too little is being done about the dramatic rise since the pandemic. A recent hearing of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) took a closer look under the bonnet. The findings weren’t pretty. The government’s annual reports estimate that fraud against the taxpayer rose from £5.5 billion to £21 billion over the two years since the start of the pandemic as compared to the two years leading up to it. Covid led to erratic and expensive action being taken without allowing for the proper safeguards to be put in place. Since then, government looks to be falling behind. A recent report by the National Audit Office (NAO) on progress in combating fraud found that “fraud made up 41 per cent of all recorded crime, but less than 1 per cent of police resources were devoted to tackling it”. Crime has shifted into the digital world, it is time for our government and law enforcement to do the same.

https://www.taxpayersalliance.com/tackling_fraud_not_a_pretty_picture