A Labour government would create a powerful Covid corruption commissioner to help recoup billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money that has been lost to waste, fraud and flawed contracts during the pandemic, Rachel Reeves is to announce.

Good luck with that! – Owl

Pippa Crerar Political editor Guardian

The new commissioner would be given the power to bring together public agencies including HMRC, the Serious Fraud Office and the National Crime Agency to pursue at least £2.6bn of “lost” public funds. They would examine contracts line by line and would have to update parliament on their progress in clawing back money.

An estimated £7.2bn was lost in fraud from Covid support schemes including from business loans and grants, furlough and “eat out to help out”, although the figure could be as high as £10.8bn, according to the House of Commons library. Labour believes a lower estimate of £4.7bn could be achieved if losses are contained.

In her conference speech in Liverpool on Monday, Reeves will announce that Labour would review sentencing on fraud and corruption conducted against UK public services, as well as reform public procurement rules to include a strong “debarment and exclusion” regime for those complicit in fraud against the state.

There would also be more robust oversight of public grant and loan schemes in future with counter-fraud experts, data management and analytics all involved to prevent financial losses.

“The cost to the taxpayer of Covid fraud is estimated at £7.2bn with every one of those cheques signed by Rishi Sunak as chancellor and yet just 2% of fraudulent Covid grants have been recovered,” Reeves will say.

“We will appoint a Covid corruption commissioner equipped with the powers they need and the mandate to do what it takes to chase those who have ripped off the taxpayer, taking them to court and clawing back every penny of taxpayers money that they can. That money belongs in our NHS, it belongs in our schools, it belongs in our police and conference – we want that money back.”

During the pandemic the government suspended its usual procurement processes and introduced a highly secretive VIP “fast lane” for procurement of goods including protective equipment. It later wrote off £8.7bn it had spent on defective or overpriced PPE.

Jolyon Maugham, the founder of the Good Law Project campaign group, said: “The scale of PPE waste and corruption is sickening: over £10bn lost; more than four in every five pounds spent. If you’re serious about looking after public money – yours and mine – you want those billions back. Recovering them starts with political will. Until now that has been sorely lacking – so this is a very positive development.”

Now you see them, now you don’t! – Owl

Documents detailing projects to be funded with savings from scrapping HS2 deleted from government website.

Ben Quinn Political Correspondent Guardian

Government documents that were abruptly deleted after appearing online with announcements of new transport projects were just giving “examples” of what savings from the scrapping of HS2’s northern leg could be spent on, a minister has claimed.

The documents detailed an extra £100m of funding for a mass transit “underground” project in Bristol. Mention of plans to invest £36bn in projects around the north and Midlands, including reopening Transport North East’s Leamside line, were also removed from the government’s website.

“We gave some examples to people about the sorts of things – and we know these things are priorities locally – the sorts of things that that money could be spent on, and to bring it to life for people,” the transport secretary, Mark Harper, told the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire on Sunday.

The deletions on Wednesday night included removing an entire page where the government pledged to “revolutionise mass transit in Bristol’. It appeared to have been replaced with a broader pledge to give the west of England combined authority £100m, which it could spend on various projects in the region.

Asked if Bristol was going to get a new mass transit system, Harper said: “My department published a document which set out very clearly what we are going to spend the £36bn on that we are saving from cancelling the second phase of HS2.

“The money that was promised for Bristol is for £100m extra for the elected mayor of the west of England combined authority and that is money that he will have available to spend on his projects including on a mass transit system… some of those things are already being delivered.”

The shadow transport secretary, Louise Haigh, described the deleted plans as “fantasy promises” by the government.

“They can’t hide from the fact that they released a document that looked like it had been scribbled in crayon by advisers that had never left London,” she said on Twitter.

Questioned on Sky News, Harper said ministers would “develop the business case” for restoring the Leamside line, despite the documents last week saying it would be reopened.

“We’ve made a big commitment to the north-east elected mayor for a significant amount of money, £1.8bn, and it will be for them to decide how they spend that money,” he told Sky News’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips show.

Every pupil in Devon is effectively worth £238 less than the average English pupil.

Forget levelling up. – Owl

Fairer funding is essential for education in Devon 

John Hart, Leader of Devon County Council www.northdevongazette.co.uk 

You may think education is a national service and it’s funded accordingly. Government financial support for a child is the same in Devon as in Dover, in Cornwall compared to Cumbria.

Well I’m afraid it’s not.

For what are complex historical reasons, every local education authority is funded differently.

When I was first in charge of education in Devon we were regularly placed in the bottom five of the 151 councils responsible for schools in this country for the funding we received.

We started regularly campaigning with parents, school leaders and governors and the support of our MPs for fair funding for Devon. And we have had some success. The current figures show us at 121 out of 151 for school funding – up 25 places. So our report might read: progress but still work to be done.

And Devon is vigorous in campaigning for fair funding for our schools as it is in every other service area. We have been at the forefront of the all-party f40 campaign – that’s the grouping of the 42 worst funded councils in the country. Indeed my deputy leader, James McInnes, was the national chairman for a number of years, Devon MP Sir Gary Streeter is a vice chairman and our current Cabinet member for schools, Andrew Leadbetter, is a leading member.

The facts are these: if you have a child or grandchild in a school in Devon the funding we receive for them nationally is £5,410 per pupil. That compares to an average in the South West of £5,431 per pupil and an England average of £5,648. So every pupil in Devon is effectively worth £238 less than the average English pupil.

For a primary school with 200 pupils that’s £47,600 lost every year. For a 1,000-pupil secondary school that’s a staggering £238,000. A newly qualified teacher earns £30,000 a year so the primary is missing out on one and a half teachers, the secondary school almost eight extra staff. We have around 95,000 children at school in Devon so, collectively, that’s an awful lot of teachers and classroom assistants that our schools could employ if only they were funded at the national level. And yet, historically, our schools perform well thanks to the hard work of staff and pupils.

When it comes to what’s known as the High Needs Block, that’s the funding we receive for children with special needs, we are placed 118th out of 151 LAs with an average allocation of £768 compared to the South West average of £806 and the England average of £855. Again you can see that Devon children miss out both compared with our neighbours in the South West and even more compared to the national figures.

That’s why we have been working with f40 in holding briefing meetings for all MPs at Westminster as Parliament returned in September and providing them with up to date figures and statistics.

The briefings included not only details on the fair funding campaign for all mainstream schools but also on the need for financial support for our special needs’ children. f40 – which I emphasise is all-party – estimates that the budget deficit faced by all top-tier councils providing support for children with special needs will be £2.5 billion by March 2025. As I wrote in a previous column, that is because need and expectation is outstripping capacity and funding across the country.

That’s why I have appointed a new Cabinet member, Lois Samuel, to concentrate solely on special needs. Together with Andrew Leadbetter and I, she will emphasise Devon’s case for all our children to be properly funded.