While Rees-Mogg is just a month into his new job as minister for government efficiency he’s already putting out some good-news press releases. A new data release by the Cabinet Office this morning shows the government saved a whopping £3.4 billion in efficiency savings and fraud crackdowns during 2020/21. Good start, long way to go…

£1.9 billion of this was delivered through reducing losses from fraud or error, with the government counter fraud function’s 16,000 civil servants reaping back £1.388 billion.

On a Covid-front, £138 million of fraudulent PPE contracts were terminated, and £14 million of fraudulent bounceback loans were prevented. The government also managed to find £10 million through the use of forged, stolen or disabled badges of deceased people…

Among other savings were:

• £1.191 billion – Using the complex transactions team to generate savings by providing specialist commercial expertise directly to departments
• £441 million – government debt management
• £212 million – Savings from 40 strategic suppliers to the government
• £142 million – Improving departments’ make the right decisions regarding spend on digital and technology
• 34 million – managing government grants to ensure effectiveness and efficiency of grant administration

There are still unaccounted hundreds of millions of pounds in suspicious transactions related to the pandemic support for business from government, that in all likelihood were made fraudulently. HMRC is now chasing after the money which should have been subject to basic checks before it was dished out. Guido was told that the Treasury was approached by a firm with expertise and AI software widely used by lenders to prevent fraud and they were dismissed as unnecessary. The consequences will be billions wasted…    

Rees-Mogg rightly observes “Taxpayers have the right to expect every penny of their money to be justified before it’s spent. These figures show quality need not be sacrificed to achieve better value for money, and I want to accelerate the progress made.” Guido looks forward to seeing how many civil servants he’s managed to cull by this time next year…