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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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File on 4: Furlough Fraud

Furlough Fraud

BBC Radio 4 - File on 4, Furlough Fraud

How some businesses claimed furlough payments while employees carried on working.

An estimated £66 billion was spent by the government during the pandemic on paying towards the wages of people who couldn’t work, or whose employers could no longer afford to pay them. That’s around one fifth of the money the government spent on the response to Covid. It says 11.6 million jobs were supported by the furlough scheme. But the scheme also exposed the government to fraud and is expected to result in billions of pounds of additional losses to the tax payer. In September of last year, only after 6 months of the scheme running, HMRC was already estimating up to £3.5 billion of fraud and error in furlough payments. Now the scheme has closed, Paul Kenyon investigates businesses that claimed furlough money even thought their employees carried on working. 

Reporter: Paul Kenyon
Producer: Anna Meisel
Editor: Carl Johnston

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