Whitehall waste costs taxpayers £14bn as cash squandered on luxury party villa and vegan ice cream

The Government has wasted £14 billion of taxpayers’ money, an investigation has found, revealing it squandered cash on a luxury villa and vegan ice cream.

An analysis of financial disclosures since the start of last year found enough Whitehall waste to cover the courts, prisons and probation budget for a year, or fund more than half of Jeremy Hunt’s expected tax raid.

An investigation by The Telegraph found billions of pounds wasted on Covid-related support, unused or broken protective equipment and apparently frivolous items, such as £6,000 on a villa in Italy. 

Other money squandered had been spent on badly-managed infrastructure projects that were either changed or delayed.  

Last night, Jacob Rees-Mogg branded the waste as “shameful”. “You cannot reasonably ask taxpayers for money that you then waste… you need to set your budgets on the basis money will be spent efficiently, and therefore you need to raise a lower level of taxation,” he said.

The total figure comprises apparently wasteful expense claims by civil servants; inadequate PPE; money lost on badly-managed projects; and fraudulent Covid support claims; based on financial disclosures published in the last year, or on the most recent  twelve months of data available.

The revelations come as Jeremy Hunt prepares to close a £50 billion hole in Britain’s finances – with £24bn of the funding expected to come from tax rises.

Dame Meg Hillier, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said: “Every pound of taxpayers’ money wasted is a pound that’s not spent either on public and public services or on tax cuts. And that actually does hit the taxpayer in the pocket.”

Huge amounts of waste associated with the pandemic, with the Department for Health and Social Care spending more than £4 billion on PPE – of which £2.6 billion was unsuitable, £670 million defective, and £750 million surplus to requirements. It then paid £436 million in fines for leaving mountains of PPE in storage too long, and agreed to pay £35 million for the destruction of PPE it cannot use.

Meanwhile, the Government handed out nearly £10 billion to likely fraudsters in Covid support schemes, after it took “inadequate” steps to protect taxpayers’ money, according to the National Audit Office.

The Government has invested millions in clawing back payments, and expects to recover at least £1.1 billion of fraudulent claims by April 2024 - but the bulk of the funds are at risk.

Billions were squandered on infrastructure projects that either incurred huge extra costs because they overran, or were changed halfway through, so that completed work had to be scrapped, including £105.6 million spent on architectural plans for HS2’s Euston station that can “no longer be used” because HS2 has been scaled back.

The Ministry of Justice spent £98 million on an electronic tagging programme that was written off after part of the programme was abandoned.

The £14 billion cost of waste identified by The Telegraph does not include other money that has already been spent on HS2 and will now be wasted. Nor does it include nearly £6 billion spent on the Ajax defence project which may never see completion.

Our analysis took account of figures in departmental accounts and expenses, statements in Parliament, and reports by the Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office. In some cases, the spending has been going on for years but was only recently identified as waste.

Items included a “Czech beads jewellery subscription box” of knitting supplies for inmates paid for by the Ministry of Justice at £554; a two-day workshop with an artist at £817 by the Department of Environment and Rural Affairs; £3,376 on ‘Aqua-Tots’ children’s swimming in Panama by the Foreign Office. 

A government spokesman said it is “committed to delivering the best value for money, cutting waste and inefficiency and ensuring every pound of taxpayers’ money is spent in the best possible way. That includes selling under-used government buildings, digitising public services, harnessing innovation, and cracking down on fraud.

“We… are working to recover fraudulent or payments made in error - we have already recovered over £1 billion and are significantly reducing PPE storage costs.”

The Department of Health and Social Care has donated millions of unused masks to schools and overseas. The Government has not written off the cost of fraudulent Bounce Back Loans, furlough payments and other coronavirus schemes, as it tries to claw these back.