LONDON: Britain’s government is failing to put enough effort into finding fraud in some of its COVID-19 support programs as taxpayers face losing at least 4 billion pounds ($5.43 billion) to criminals and mistakes, a parliamentary report said.
The Public Accounts Committee, which scrutinizes state spending, said the lenient approach will encourage future criminal activity because the government risks “rewarding the unscrupulous” and officials seen to be “soft on fraud.”
After coronavirus shut much of the British economy in early 2020, the government provided hundreds of billions of pounds to businesses, hoping to keep them and their staff afloat. At the time, the government described the support as one of the most significant economic interventions in British history.
The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, widely known as furlough, cost 70 billion pounds — the most expensive single piece of UK economic support during the pandemic. At its peak, the program paid a third of British workers’ wages.
The government also spent 28.1 billion pounds on a parallel scheme for the self-employed and 840 million pounds offering discounted meals at restaurants, cafes, and pubs.
But the government has since found that some employers claimed money for workers who did not exist, and others took cash while their staff continued to work.
The committee criticized the government’s “unambitious” plans to only recover about 2 billion pounds of the estimated 6 billion pounds lost to criminals or given out incorrectly.
“Every taxpayers’ pound lost to a fraudster will lead to honest ordinary people feeling the post-pandemic pinch harder and harder,” said Meg Hillier, chair of the committee. “With the current parlous state of the public finances we can ill-afford to be so cavalier over so much taxpayers’ money.”
A government spokesperson rejected many of committee’s statements and said the support was created quickly to support people in desperate need. He said no fraudulent payments have been written off and the government was taking action to recover over-payments.
“The vast majority of payments in the schemes were made correctly to employers, and most error and fraud was legitimate claimants making mistakes or inflating their claims, often small per case,” the spokesperson said.
“The cost of inaction would have been far greater than the cost of fraud and error in the support schemes.”
But Theodore Agnew, a junior minister who was responsible for government efforts to counter fraud, resigned in protest last month. He said the oversight of a separate business loan program was “nothing less than woeful” and accused the government of making “schoolboy errors.”
Britain’s public spending chief last month urged z those who swindled billions of dollars of COVID support money from the state to give the cash back.
“We will now pursue anybody who has taken this money fraudulently,” Chief Secretary to the Treasury Simon Clarke said. “And I would urge anyone who’s taken that money and didn’t really need it to make contact.”
UK must do more to recoup billions of pounds of COVID fraud, lawmakers say
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UK must do more to recoup billions of pounds of COVID fraud, lawmakers say
- The government has found that some employers have taken advantage of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme to claim money for workers who did not exist
Shooter kills 9 at Canadian school and residence
- The shooter was found dead with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound
- A total of 27 people were wounded in the shooting, including two with serious injuries
TORONTO: A shooter killed nine people and wounded dozens more at a secondary school and a residence in a remote part of western Canada on Tuesday, authorities said, in one of the deadliest mass shootings in the country’s history.
The suspect, described by police in an initial emergency alert as a “female in a dress with brown hair,” was found dead with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said.
The attack occurred in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, a picturesque mountain valley town in the foothills of the Rockies.
A total of 27 people were wounded in the shooting, including two with serious injuries, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said in a statement.
Prime Minister Mark Carney said he was “devastated” by the “horrific acts of violence” and announced he was suspending plans to travel to the Munich Security Conference on Wednesday, where he had been set to hold talks with allies on transatlantic defense readiness.
Police said an alert was issued about an active shooter at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School on Tuesday afternoon.
As police searched the school, they found six people shot dead. A seventh person with a gunshot wound died en route to hospital.
Separately, police found two more bodies at a residence in the town.
The residence is “believed to be connected to the incident,” police said.
At the school, “an individual believed to be the shooter was also found deceased with what appears to be a self?inflicted injury,” police said.
Police have not yet released any information about the age of the shooter or the victims.
“We are devastated by the loss of life and the profound impact this tragedy has had on families, students, staff, and our entire town,” the municipality of Tumbler Ridge said in a statement.
Tumbler Ridge student Darian Quist told public broadcaster CBC that he was in his mechanics class when there was an announcement that the school was in lockdown.
He said that initially he “didn’t think anything was going on,” but started receiving “disturbing” photos about the carnage.
“It set in what was happening,” Quist said.
He said he stayed in lockdown for more than two hours until police stormed in, ordering everyone to put their hands up before escorting them out of the school.
Trent Ernst, a local journalist and a former substitute teacher at Tumbler Ridge, expressed shock over the shooting at the school, where one of his children has just graduated.
He noted that school shootings have been a rarity occurring every few years in Canada compared with the United States, where they are far more frequent.
“I used to kind of go: ‘Look at Canada, look at who we are.’ But then that one school shooting every 2.5 years happens in your town and things... just go off the rails,” he told AFP.
‘Heartbreak’
While mass shootings are extremely rare in Canada, last April, a vehicle attack that targeted a Filipino cultural festival in Vancouver killed 11 people.
British Columbia Premier David Eby called the latest violence “unimaginable.”
Nina Krieger, British Columbia’s minister of public safety, said it was “one of the worst mass shootings in our province’s and country’s history.”
The Canadian Olympic Committee, whose athletes are competing in the 2026 Winter Games in Italy, said Wednesday it was “heartbroken by the news of the horrific school shooting.”
Ken Floyd, commander of the police’s northern district, said: “This has been an incredibly difficult and emotional day for our community, and we are grateful for the cooperation shown as officers continue their work to advance the investigation.”
Floyd told reporters the shooter was the same suspect police described as “female” in a prior emergency alert to community members, but declined to provide any details on the suspect’s identity.
The police said officers were searching other homes and properties in the community to see if there were additional sites connected to the incident.
Tumbler Ridge, a quiet town with roughly 2,400 residents, is more than 1,100 kilometers (680 miles) north of Vancouver, British Columbia’s largest city.
“There are no words sufficient for the heartbreak our community is experiencing tonight,” the municipality said.
