Niall Hearty assesses the Public Sector Fraud Authority’s chances of being a success

With the government having announced the creation of the Public Sector Fraud Authority, Niall Hearty wrote an article about the challenge it faces.

In his piece, which was published by Lawyer Monthly, Niall detailed the scale of the fraud problem that the new Authority will have to tackle.

Those in favour of the new body think it will ensure that government departments are held to account regarding the identification and prevention of fraud and will work well alongside HM Revenue and Customs’ taxpayer protection taskforce.

But Niall argues that with the government set to write off an estimated £4 billion of taxpayers’ money that was lost to fraudulent COVID-19 payments, the new Authority may be arriving too late to be effective. He believes that the money being invested in the new body is dwarfed by the amounts the government is losing to fraud.

He concludes that it will take lengthy, intense efforts to try and recover even a small percentage of what the government has paid out to fraudsters – and the investment in the Authority is unlikely to be enough to cover this.

While the new measures do initially appear impressive, Niall says that they are unlikely to help eradicate such a major problem.

Niall's article featured on Lawyer Monthly.