Ministers have been warned that fraud prevention efforts are falling short across government, as a major Covid report found that fraud and errors had resulted in a £10.9bn loss to UK taxpayers during the pandemic.

The report, by the independent Covid counter-fraud commissioner Tom Hayhoe, found that government schemes designed to support struggling businesses and their staff were rolled out at speed with no early safeguards, resulting in huge fraud risks that cost the public purse.

Weak accountability, bad quality data and poor contracting were the main failures behind the £10.9bn loss, but Hayhoe also concluded that fraud prevention was “insufficiently embedded in thinking and practice across government”.

The losses mounted on a series of schemes launched by the previous, Conservative

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