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An estimated 拢66 billion was spent by the government during the pandemic on paying towards the wages of people who couldn鈥檛 work, or whose employers could no longer afford to pay them. That鈥檚 around one fifth of the money the government spent on the response to Covid. It says 11.6 million jobs were supported by the furlough scheme. But the scheme also exposed the government to fraud and is expected to result in billions of pounds of additional losses to the tax payer. In September of last year, only after 6 months of the scheme running, HMRC was already estimating up to 拢3.5 billion of fraud and error in furlough payments. Now the scheme has closed, Paul Kenyon investigates businesses that claimed furlough money even thought their employees carried on working.

Reporter: Paul Kenyon
Producer: Anna Meisel
Editor: Carl Johnston