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The Labor Party has produced a document highlighting 100 examples of “wasteful government spending” during Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s tenure as Treasury Secretary.
Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves said that during her tenure at the Treasury, Snak oversaw the waste of “billions of pounds” and “could have transformed Britain”, but instead “caught scammers and edge subcontractors.” It was handed over to the trader,” he said.
“British people deserve a government that treats taxpayers’ money with respect,” she said.
“What all of these 100 examples have in common is that the man whose job it was to scrutinize this spending for three years never lifted a finger to stop the money being wasted, often , ignoring direct warnings of risk.”
She said these examples were “a badge of shame” for the prime minister, and promised that the Labor government would “treat every pound of taxpayer money with the respect it deserves”.
“With our strong fiscal rules and office for value for money, labor eradicates waste and makes our economy stronger.”
The Labor charges come as Sunak and Prime Minister Jeremy Hunt prepare next month’s budget bill, which will put them under pressure from lawmakers behind the scenes to find room for tax cuts.
Prior to becoming Prime Minister, he served as Secretary of the Treasury from July 2019 to February 2020 before being promoted to Prime Minister, where he served until his resignation in July 2022.
The 100 cases produced by Labor represent £26.8bn in lost spending and cover multiple areas, including coronavirus aid, NHS spending and defense spending, all overseen by Sunak while in the Treasury. It covers.
The Department of Labor prepared the dossier from publicly available departmental data, reports from the National Audit Office (NAO) and media reports.
Some of the cases have been linked to the purchase of PPE during the pandemic, with £7.94 billion reportedly wasted on products that were too expensive, could not be used by the NHS, or were not used before their expiration date. increase.
Workers also highlighted taxpayer money lost to fraud related to furlough schemes totaling £3.46 billion and loan repayment schemes for small businesses totaling £1.12 billion.
Examples of other coronavirus scams include £1 billion reportedly lost to scams via Covid-era support for self-employed people and £1.12 billion lost to bounce-back loans for businesses Includes pounds.
Unused vaccines cost £2.33 billion in non-refundable upfront payments for vaccines that were ultimately no longer needed and £214 million in French Valneva vaccine contracts that were eventually canceled by the government. Millions of pounds were spent and a lot of expenses were incurred.
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The Ministry of Defense (MoD) has also highlighted wasteful spending, with multiple delays or cancellations of equipment procurement, costing taxpayers a lot of money.
A 76-month delay to the new warhead facility at Bergfield put the cost of the project at £1.07 billion over budget and the procurement of new Astute-class submarines at £1.01 billion over budget.
The scrapping of the Warrior armor upgrade by the Ministry of Defense cost £594.6m, but delays in the purchase of new Chinook helicopters pushed up the projected cost of the project due to rising inflation, so an additional £2 It cost £95million.
Another example was the Unboxed Festival, often called the “Brexit Festival”. This cost him £120m to stage, but only garnered 240,000 visitors despite a target of 66m.
An advertising campaign worth £46m, which ran ahead of the UK’s planned departure from the EU on 31 October 2019, was also wasted after the postponement. He later found that the campaign also did little to improve public preparedness for departure, according to NAO reports.
In response to the document, Conservative Party Chairman Greg Hands said: , only shows that workers are unfit to govern. ”