Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask His Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the fraud and error of the Film and TV Production Restart Scheme; what processes are in place to identify, quantify and mitigate fraud and error in that scheme; and how much has been recovered as a result of those processes as of the most recent date available.

External auditors were appointed to review the level of fraud and error in the Film and TV Production Restart Scheme, which ran between October 2020 and April 2022 under the previous Government. This was an indemnity scheme with robust checks at application and claims stages by the scheme administrator and loss adjusters.

The evaluation found an error rate of less than 1%, and did not identify any fraud. The supplier concluded that the scheme had strong governance controls in place reducing the risk of fraud, and the rate of error was within expectations, particularly in the context of a pandemic where there is a need to prioritise speed and financial support to organisations. Errors were reviewed by the administrator and corrected where appropriate within the terms of the scheme, with £2240 recovered accounting for the majority of the error rate.