Chris Elmore, MP for Ogmore, is calling on the UK Government to bring forward the Economic Crime Bill to tackle fraud and corruption as it was revealed last week the Treasury wrote off £4.3 billion paid out in fraud and error under Covid support schemes. This is equal to £154 written off for each of the 27.8 million households in the UK.

Lord Agnew, the UK Government’s own anti-fraud Minister, has resigned in protest at the “arrogance, indolence and ignorance” of the UK Government towards this issue, as total fraud loss across the UK Government is estimated at a shocking £29 billion each year.

The Conservative UK Government has been squandering public money on projects that do not represent value for money and taxpayers money well spent, from Liz Truss spending £500k on flights to Australia, to spending £2.8 billion on 1.9 million pieces of PPE that ultimately were never used, and spending billions of taxpayers money on Covid contracts awarded to Tory-linked firms.

The Labour Party held an Opposition Day Debate in Parliament this week, calling on the UK Government to vote to allow the National Crime Agency to investigate such astronomical levels of fraud, and for them to come back with an update on the amount of taxpayers funds they’ve clawed back from criminals by the end of March.

Chris Elmore, MP for Ogmore, said:

“The UK Tory Government has an appalling record on fraud, wasting huge amounts of public money with no respect for taxpayers in Ogmore who are currently experiencing a cost of living crisis. 

The Chancellor himself wrote off £4.3 billion paid out in fraud and error under Covid support schemes, including allowing more than 1000 companies to receive bounce-back loans which were not even trading when Covid struck.  How can he possibly expect the public to trust him with their hard-earned tax?”