According to data obtained by the PA news agency through a freedom of information request, £215,756,121 in job retention scheme cash has been repaid to the government.
More than 80,000 UK firms have returned millions of pounds voluntarily in furlough scheme payments they had either taken in error or decided they did not require.
Amongst the businesses returning money are Ikea, the house builder Redrow, Games Workshop, Spectator magazine and the distribution giant, Bunzi.
HMRC stated that the voluntary return of the money “because they no longer need the grant, or have realised they've made errors and followed our guidance on putting things right” was very welcome.
In addition, other employers have said they will not claim money under the government’s job retention bonus scheme - £1,000 for every worker brought back from furlough and kept in employment until the end of January 2021.
Iskander Fernandez - Partner at law firm BLM and specialist in white collar crime investigations - stated:
“Given that the aim of fraud is to deceive the victim, it is unlikely that any fraudster would come forward for the simple reason they could incriminate themselves by doing so. It is more likely the payments that have been returned are from businesses that have made an error when claiming under the scheme or failed to adopt changes when the scheme was slightly tweaked post lockdown."
He commented that the voluntary repayment of furlough cash is significant and the amount that has been returned is unlikely to be from someone who claimed the funding fraudulently because it could “open that individual up to a criminal investigation and possible proceedings in a criminal court".
Previously, HMRC estimated that up to 10 per cent of the funds paid through the scheme - £3.5bn - could have been awarded in error or fraudulently claimed.
Jim Harra - HMRC’s first permanent secretary - told the Public Accounts Committee that his team had “made an assumption for the purposes of our planning” that the “error and fraud” rate for the furlough scheme would be between 5 and 10 per cent.
He stated:
“This will range from deliberate fraud through to error. What we have said in our risk assessment is we are not going to set out to try to find employers that have made legitimate mistakes in compiling their claims, because this is obviously something new that everybody had to get to grips with in a very difficult time.”
He said that HMRC would be focusing on tackling abuse of the scheme. The tax body expected all employers to check for errors in their claims and “repay any excess amount”.
Anna Birtwhistle, Employment Partner at Farrer & Co, commented that reputation was one of the prime motivations for businesses paying back the funding - adding:
“You can see there’s a pattern in some industries – Redrow was soon followed by Barratt, for example – so there’s a reputational aspect where certain companies may keep an eye on what their competitors are doing.”
However, she added that being able to repay the grant will likely be the exception rather than the rule.
