Some rare fireworks in the House of Lords this afternoon. Lord Agnew, the minister responsible for Whitehall efficiency, has just resigned his ministerial posts after he told peers he was unable to defend the Treasury’s record. Responding to an Urgent Question by Labour, he strongly criticised the UK government’s ‘lamentable track record’ in tackling fraud in a flagship state-backed coronavirus business loan scheme.
The bounce back loan scheme handed out £47 billion, of which £4.9 billion was fraudulently claimed, the Business department estimates. It has a target to recover just £6 million from organised crime over three years. It’s the sheer waste here – billions of taxpayers’ money wrongly handed out – that led to Agnew’s resignation.
In a six-minute speech to peers, Agnew quietly but politely damned the Treasury by claiming the department ‘appears to have no knowledge or little interest in the consequences of fraud to our economy or our society.’
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