Rachel Reeves has appointed Tom Hayhoe, an experienced healthcare and regulation adviser, as the government’s Covid corruption commissioner.
Hayhoe, who has been the chair of a large list of organisations, including several NHS trusts, will be asked to work in partnership with HM Revenue and Customs, the National Crime Agency and the Serious Fraud Office to investigate more than £7bn of fraud from Covid support schemes such as the Small Business Grant Fund, furlough and "Eat out to help out", according to the Guardian.
Appointed for a fixed one-year term, he is expected to begin his work by reviewing £674m in contracts that were previously written off by the government.
Announcing the appointment in a video on social media website X, Reeves said: “Fraudsters who sought to make a profit of a national emergency should not get away with it. Before the election, we promised to appoint a fixed-term commissioner and use every means possible to recoup public money lost in pandemic-related, contracts which have not been delivered. We've kept our promise, and now the work starts to put this money, which belongs to the British people, back into our public services, to fix our NHS, repair crumbling classrooms, and to put more police on the street.”
Hayhoe, who was an adviser to a Conservative Party cabinet minister more than 40 years ago before joining the Social Democratic Party in 1981, said he is “looking forward” to starting the new job “addressing the losses of public money during the pandemic”.
His current roles include being chair of the Legal Services Consumer Panel – which provides advice to the Legal Services Board, a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Ministry of Justice – and an external assessor at the College of Policing.
Previous positions he has held have include chairman roles at the advisory board for the Government of Jersey's health and community services, the Nursing and Midwifery Council and West London NHS Trust.