The Government has wasted £14 billion of taxpayers’ money, an investigation has found, revealing it squandered cash on a luxury villa and vegan ice cream.
An analysis of financial disclosures since the start of last year found enough Whitehall waste to cover the courts, prisons and probation budget for a year, or fund more than half of Jeremy Hunt’s expected tax raid.
An investigation by The Telegraph found billions of pounds wasted on Covid-related support, unused or broken protective equipment and apparently frivolous items, such as £6,000 on a villa in Italy.
Other money squandered had been spent on badly-managed infrastructure projects that were either changed or delayed.
Last night, Jacob Rees-Mogg branded the waste as “shameful”. “You cannot reasonably ask taxpayers for money that you then waste… you need to set your budgets on the basis money will be spent efficiently, and therefore you need to raise a lower level of taxation,” he said.
The total figure comprises apparently wasteful expense claims by civil servants; inadequate PPE; money lost on badly-managed projects; and fraudulent Covid support claims; based on financial disclosures published in the last year, or on the most recent twelve months of data available.
The revelations come as Jeremy Hunt prepares to close a £50 billion hole in Britain’s finances – with £24bn of the funding expected to come from tax rises.
Dame Meg Hillier, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said: “Every pound of taxpayers’ money wasted is a pound that’s not spent either on public and public services or on tax cuts. And that actually does hit the taxpayer in the pocket.”
Huge amounts of waste associated with the pandemic, with the Department for Health and Social Care spending more than £4 billion on PPE – of which £2.6 billion was unsuitable, £670 million defective, and £750 million surplus to requirements. It then paid £436 million in fines for leaving mountains of PPE in storage too long, and agreed to pay £35 million for the destruction of PPE it cannot use.
