Up to £3.5bn furlough scheme cash may have been wrongly paid out

Error and fraud rate for scheme estimated at between 5% and 10%, says HMRC chief

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The government believes it may have paid out up to 3.5bn in wrong or fraudulent claims for the furlough scheme.

Jim Harra, the top civil servant at HM Revenue & Customs, said that his staff had calculated for the possibility that as much as 10% of the money might have gone to the wrong places.