Government axes Crimestoppers Covid hotline
The Crimestoppers Covid hotline has been shut down, despite warnings that billions of pounds in pandemic-related fraud has yet to be recovered.
The dedicated whistleblowers’ hotline was launched in October 2020 to help facilitate the reporting of suspected fraudulent activity, but the Cabinet Office has quietly closed it down, The Telegraph reported.
At the launch of the initiative, the then Cabinet Office minister Julia Lopez said: “Many people work hard to pay their taxes, so it’s a gross injustice that fraudsters are shamefully taking advantage of measures set up to help people during the lockdown.
“We cannot let criminals profit from the Covid crisis, as every pound stolen by fraudsters could be invested in our vital public services. This is why we are urging the public to report any information to the Crimestoppers Covid Fraud Hotline.”
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The National Audit Office has warned that the total figure for fraudulent business loan claims could rise as high as £5bn. HMRC’s own figures, as reported to Parliament’s Treasury Select Committee recently, put the figure lost to fraud at £4.5bn.
The hotline closure follows criticism that Covid-era lending schemes – including the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme and the bounce back loan scheme – lacked adequate checks against fraud.
The Telegraph reports that a total of £1.1bn of state-backed loans handed to small businesses during the pandemic has been classified as fraudulent so far, according to the latest government figures.
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The Cabinet Office is the process of migrating data obtained from the hotline to another system so it can be accessed by the Insolvency Service, it said.
The closure comes in the wake of the government’s decision to close down the £100m Taxpayer Protection Taskforce (TPT), which was set up to recover money stolen through Covid fraud, after clawing back hundreds of millions less than expected.
The Treasury aimed to recover between £800m and £1bn from fraudsters, although the government had revised this figure down to between £525m and £625m. The TPT is set to close in March.