FUR-LOADS | £3.5billion of furlough money 'paid in error'

Up to £3.5billion of furlough money may have been paid out on the back of wrong or fraudulent claims, according to Government estimates.

HMRC has calculated that between five and ten per cent of payments have been wrongly calculated, as a result of employers abusing the scheme - Metro reported.

Speaking to MPs on Monday, HMRC’s top civil servant Jim Harra said: “We have made an assumption for the purposes of our planning that the error and fraud rate in this scheme could be between five per cent and ten per cent.”

On that assumption, it will mean somewhere between £1.75billion and £3.5billion will have been paid to employers making furloughed people work.