Nana Akua: The government doesn’t appear to be taking fraud seriously

I want to talk about FRAUD.. and it’s costing you and I the taxpayer up to £1 billion every week.

Labour peer Lord Sikka, an accountancy expert, recently unearthed a report which suggested £52billion as the annual figure lost by the treasury to fraud.

That’s more than £1,600 a second and four times the amount the government want us to pay through the national insurance tax rise in April which will see you and I shelling out at least £255 extra per year on an average salary of £30,000 and obviously more if you earn more.

Lord Sikka said ‘This is horrendous given that even the poorest people are being asked to pay more in tax and national insurance and given the vast queues we have for the NHS. It is utter negligence.’

Now I am happy to pay to support social care and the NHS, but I’m struggling here, because I don’t believe that once the government obtain this money, that it will be spent properly at all.

We hear a lot here about the cost of living crisis and rise in energy prices etc, but if you look into it in more detail, it appears that a lot of this could’ve been avoided.

Take the pandemic, a £37 billion pound budget for Track and Trace, sadly we appear to be having trouble tracking and tracing where a lot of it went.

Then there were the dodgy PPE contracts, many given to businesses who didn’t appear to have any expertise in making PPE, but just happened to have links with the government.

There were the loans to companies that didn’t exist, companies house enabling the registration of names like.

And it doesn’t bode well when their very own Treasury Minister Lord Agnew quits citing a failure by the government to prevent criminals from stealing £29billion each year..

That’s our money they are wasting, but the government don’t appear to be taking this seriously.

Take Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng comments where he referred to this type of fraud as not a ‘crime that people experience in their day-to-day lives’.

I beg to differ Kwasi, my everyday life will be impacted by it, because through no fault of my own, your lot have taken my money through taxes and dished it out willy nilly to dodgy companies, loaned money to crooks who you cannot find and spent my money without doing the proper due diligence required to make you sure you got it back, resulting in me,the tax payer, having to pick up the tab.

Of course it’s impacting on my life.

Every penny I earn is now worth just that bit less.

So I’m afraid Kwasi you’re wrong.

What you really mean is that you can’t catch or can’t be bothered to catch the little…. It’s a disgrace.

Meg Hillier MP, chairwoman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee summed it up when she said Ministers had a ‘laissez faire’ attitude towards fraud ‘This is taxpayers’ money, they work hard to earn it and they give it over rather reluctantly but in the hope that it is spent properly. There needs to be a much more serious attitude from the Government.’

Can you imagine if we all displayed the same laissez faire attitude to paying our taxes citing their incompetence.

HMRC wouldn't allow that.

Perhaps it's time we took back control of our money as well.