Former chancellor Rishi Singh came under fire for cheating in the Covid scheme.

Senior Tories have hammered Rishi Singh for allowing billions of pounds to be lost in fraud and error from covid schemes.

The former chancellor has been forced to defend his pandemic record as he tries to portray himself as a vigilant guardian of the public’s finances.

His critics are determined to make handling the crisis a key issue as Conservative MPs prepare to vote on whether they want Mr Sink or Liz Truss to replace Boris Johnson.

This week Mr Sink said it was ‘reasonable’ to raise taxes ‘because everyone knows we’ve spent a fortune during Covid’.

Fraudsters were expected to lose another £4 billion from the furlough scheme and the Eat Out to Help Out restaurant subsidy.

This week Mr Sink said the tax hike was ‘reasonable’ ‘because everyone knows we’ve spent a fortune during Covid’. But leading Tories described his ‘spray and pay’ approach to the coronavirus as ‘shamefully careless’, and accused Mr Sink of ‘talking a good game, which doesn’t match the delivery’. .

A tenth of the £376bn Covid bill was wasted by the Treasury in fraud, waste or loss – potentially costing every Briton £559. This includes up to £17bn of loans made under the bounceback loan scheme which will never be repaid. According to the latest estimates, £3.5 billion of this was lost to organized criminals, fraudsters and errors.

Fraudsters were expected to lose another £4 billion from the furlough scheme and the Eat Out to Help Out restaurant subsidy. The losses have prompted critics to question Mr Sink’s record at the Treasury. Lord Agnew, who resigned over his failure to tackle fraud, told the Daily Mail: ‘Rishi Singh has set his stall out as a vigilant watchdog of the country’s finances but key questions remain unanswered about how the government cheated. is dealing with a terrifying level of Covid schemes.

Mr Sink has repeatedly blocked the publication of performance dashboards that could save taxpayers hundreds of thousands, if not billions, of pounds. He talks a good game, but the delivery on the ground doesn’t match it. It is a cruel irony that at a time when we are diverting resources to help with crisis living costs, taxpayers’ money is being wasted on this scale.’

Another senior Tory said: ‘It is disgracefully careless that no basic safeguards were taken when these loans were taken out. Billions were recklessly thrown out the door…efforts to recover the money have been unsuccessful to say the least. And now we’re paying the highest taxes since the 1940s to fund it all. It’s just amazing.’ A third Tory said: ‘Clearly Rishi Singh adopted a spray and pay policy and we could all see on the grounds that something was wrong. To a certain extent you can understand why in a national emergency you just want to get the money out. But it is still true that billions of pounds of fraud has been committed by individuals and organized crime. The buck has to stop at the Treasury and Mr. Sink.’

After Liz Maggi, Rishi Dev…

We’ve already seen Liz Truss wearing an outfit reminiscent of Margaret Thatcher.

And now – with rolled-up sleeves and an open collar – it looks like Rishi Singh is trying to draw comparisons to another Tory prime minister: David Cameron.

Former chancellor Mr Sink was pictured campaigning in Sevenoaks, Kent yesterday, striking a strikingly similar pose to Mr Cameron, who made a conscious effort not to dress too formally.

Both politicians attended elite private schools, but Mr Sink may want the comparison to end there as he tries to appeal to the Tory right.

With rolled-up sleeves and an open collar – it looks like Rishi Shanks is trying to draw comparisons to another Tory prime minister: David Cameron.

A senior Tory said: ‘Clearly Rishi Singh had adopted a spray and pay policy and we could all see on the basis that something was wrong. To a certain extent you can understand why in a national emergency you just want to get the money out. But it is still true that billions of pounds of fraud has been committed by individuals and organized crime. The buck has to stop at Treasury and Mr. Sink.

During a TV debate last Sunday, leadership rival Kemi Badenoch claimed Mr Sink had ignored her concerns that support schemes were being fraudulent while she was a junior minister at the Treasury.

Mr Sink replied: ‘That’s not right at all. We have taken the fight against fraud incredibly seriously and have put all systems in place to recover money from fraudsters… so far dozens of arrests have been made, and billions of rupees have been recovered.

During a TV debate last Sunday, leadership rival Kemi Badenoch claimed Mr Sink had ignored her concerns that support schemes were being fraudulent when she was a junior minister at the Treasury. He replied: ‘That’s not quite right. We have taken the fight against fraud incredibly seriously and have put in place all systems to recover money from fraudsters… Dozens of arrests have been made so far, and billions of rupees have been recovered.’

Adding that he was ‘proud’ of his record, he said new estimates of fraud on the bounceback loan scheme had been cut by a third. The government declined to comment.

He warned that urgent action was needed to save the NHS from collapse.

In a speech in Grantham, Lincolnshire, Mr Sink will say: ‘Waiting times for everything from major surgery to GP visits are at record levels’.

The NHS will be ‘broken’ unless urgent action is taken to tackle waiting lists, Rishi Singh will warn today.

The former chancellor is to unveil a package of measures – such as turning empty high street shops into pop-up diagnostic centers and creating a new vaccine-style task force to cut red tape.

In the wake of the pandemic, NHS waiting lists have reached a record 6.6 million with more than 330,000 people waiting over a year for treatment.

The crisis has seen a rise in the number of people self-funding their medical treatment, with 69,000 forced to pay privately in the last quarter of last year – an increase of more than a third.

In a speech in Grantham, Lincolnshire, Mr Sink will say: ‘Waiting times for everything from major surgery to GP visits are at record levels. There are already too many people using money they really can’t afford to go private… it’s privatization through the back door and it’s wrong.

‘People shouldn’t have to choose with a gun to their head. If we don’t urgently train a radically different approach, the NHS will come under unsustainable pressure and collapse. From day one I will make tackling the NHS backlog my number one public service priority.’

Today’s speech in Grantham is a deliberate nod to Margaret Thatcher, who was born in the town. Mr Sink is keen to stress his Thatcherite credentials. He wrote in The Daily Telegraph this week that as prime minister, he would ‘deliver a set of reforms similar to the one Margaret Thatcher brought to growth and prosperity in the 1980s’.