Where has the Covid money gone?

[Pistom]

I heard a figure of £800 Billion being spent by UK Government on Covid but I wonder if there's a breakdown of what it was spent on and where it went.

Who are the people and organisations who has that money now?

Surely the biggest winners will have been the ultra wealthy?

I know of several business owners who had their most profitable years during the Covid times due to the massive amounts some received through grants etc together with exceptionally good trading.

[Alorotom]

HMRC are recovering a reasonable amount that was falsely claimed by small businesses and individuals

A massive chunk of it went into PPE companies - some of which delivered to spec, some delivered to the wrong spec and the products went into storage, and some simply didnt deliver at all.

A friend of mine owns a reasonably well respected and known sports/supercar dealership franchise in Yorkshire and he will openly admit that covid lockdown (the first time) saw the largest influx of deposts against new-build cars he has ever known - the surge was unfounded.

[krisdelta]

Here you go, covers spend on businesses and individuals.

https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explaine...

[LHRFlightman]

[Type R Tom]

Not sure how true this is and in the US of course:

[Dingu]

Type R Tom said:

Not sure how true this is and in the US of course:

Not that I’m defending billionaires as such but wasn’t that earned based on company valuation so not real as such?

In amazons case more people probably used them so their value will increase. We saw similar with other companies who were more online based doing very well when people had little alternative.
Some of that has persisted but other companies have seen any gain fall away since.

So it’s not so much direct benefit from what governments did but rather being able to capitalise on the changing situation - I realise capitalise is a loaded word but to go back to Amazon the ability to still buy things was valuable to me, their value increasing as a result is a natural consequence of them being set up to offer what they do. There is an argument that furlough etc enabled people to purchase items they otherwise would have and therefore the money ultimately went to them but I don’t think there was a great alternative once the decision was made to shut down (trying to avoid derailing on the rights and wrongs of that, there are other threads for that!).

[Type R Tom]

Dingu said:

Not that I’m defending billionaires as such but wasn’t that earned based on company valuation so not real as such?

In amazons case more people probably used them so their value will increase. We saw similar with other companies who were more online based doing very well when people had little alternative.
Some of that has persisted but other companies have seen any gain fall away since.

So it’s not so much direct benefit from what governments did but rather being able to capitalise on the changing situation - I realise capitalise is a loaded word but to go back to Amazon the ability to still buy things was valuable to me, their value increasing as a result is a natural consequence of them being set up to offer what they do. There is an argument that furlough etc enabled people to purchase items they otherwise would have and therefore the money ultimately went to them but I don’t think there was a great alternative once the decision was made to shut down (trying to avoid derailing on the rights and wrongs of that, there are other threads for that!).

I get that, I was as guilty as the next person of spending petrol money on stuff I didn't need. I shop at Amazon, too so probably a hypocrite but I wonder how much less money Bezos would have if he made Amazon the best company in the world to work for, I doubt he would even notice.

[Condi]

Private Eye have done a lot of work on this, available for free here;

https://www.private-eye.co.uk/special-reports/prof...

[Frankthered]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1RqztaTgTI

Gary has some ideas ...

[Maxdecel]

LHRFlightman said:

By coincidence - https://www.itn.co.uk/media-centre/channel-airs-mi...

[Digga]

Condi said:

Private Eye have done a lot of work on this, available for free here;

https://www.private-eye.co.uk/special-reports/prof...

Excellent article, other than it omits one interesting item of note; Gove's special religious friends taking the bulk of the PPE contracts.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/02/m...

[Truckosaurus]

Even in my small-ish town there were 2 testing centres setup in carparks, both with a fleet of portacabins, generators and lighting gantries, that sat there for a good 18 months to 2 years, no doubt rented at great cost.

There must be hundreds of similar scenes around the country.

Some people were using the 'free' test kits pretty much daily - I know one person who was constantly testing as they claimed they had to do the shopping for their elderly mother and didn't want to pass anything on (they were also the sort of hypochondriac that was spraying their shopping down with disinfectant before bringing it into the house).

[tangerine_sedge]

There was a whole chunk of obviously fraudulent activity which will never get recovered. The question is will the current government lift that particular stone as the wholesale theft will be very embaressing for all concerned...

[Condi]

tangerine_sedge said:

There was a whole chunk of obviously fraudulent activity which will never get recovered. The question is will the current government lift that particular stone as the wholesale theft will be very embaressing for all concerned...

They (HMRC/ SFO etc) are prosecuting some people where there is evidence, but the vast majority will never be recovered.

So many businesses took the £50k loan and have or will phoenix themselves into a different company with the money being written off. Plenty of Universal Credit fraud, lots and lots of self employed people claiming all the free money and still working as well, non of that will ever be recovered and the amounts on their own are not worth bothering with, but together are billions and billions.

[Terminator X]

Some went here x5



TX.

[Digga]

tangerine_sedge said:

There was a whole chunk of obviously fraudulent activity which will never get recovered. The question is will the current government lift that particular stone as the wholesale theft will be very embaressing for all concerned...

Quite a lot of the Covid and Bounce Back business loans, as article linked to says, were entirely fraudulent and will likely never be recovered. Much of that capital is overseas now.

There were some very 'creative' uses of furlough too. Especially around football fixtures. Should not be too difficult to spot those, but as you say, whether anyone wants to lift that, or any of the other stones, is unlikely.

[Mr Penguin]

Digga said:

Quite a lot of the Covid and Bounce Back business loans, as article linked to says, were entirely fraudulent and will likely never be recovered. Much of that capital is overseas now.

There were some very 'creative' uses of furlough too. Especially around football fixtures. Should not be too difficult to spot those, but as you say, whether anyone wants to lift that, or any of the other stones, is unlikely.

What happened with furlough and football?

[Gareth79]

I bought this at auction a few weeks ago, it's a high-throughput PCR testing machine, manufactured in 2021, and according to the on-board log files was only ever used for COVID testing for four days in 2022. I paid... *£10* for it:

[borcy]

Terminator X said:

Some went here x5



TX.

I didn't think they were much to set up in the end? Might be wrong though.

[Condi]

Gareth79 said:

I bought this at auction a few weeks ago, it's a high-throughput PCR testing machine, manufactured in 2021, and according to the on-board log files was only ever used for COVID testing for four days in 2022. I paid... *£10* for it:

Ummmm

Why? What can you do with it? Genuinely interested! Is there a use for such things? Do I need one??