Thread by @faisalislam

Treasury minister Lord Agnew resigns at despatch box calling anti fraud measures on pandemic loans “desperately inadequate”
- “oversight by both BEIS & British Business Bank ..nothing less than woeful”..
“HMT has no knowledge or little interest in consequences of fraud”

…Ouch - Treasury minister Agnew resigning at despatch box on Covid rescue anti fraud failings: “Schoolboy errors were made, for example allowing over 1000 companies to receive Bounceback loans who were not even trading when Covid struck”

“… simply failed to understand agents hold in stock companies with earlier creation dates…”
“Ive been arguing with Treasury and BEIS officials for two years to get them to lift their game, I have mostly been unsuccessful”…

Now move to a “new and dangerous phase” where Banks can claim on 100% state guarantee for non repayment , says Agnew.

“without implementing a standard bar” for counter fraud measures, 2/7 of the banks account for 81% of loans paid to companies created after covid

If only BEIS and BBB would “wake up” - still no dashboard of lender performance even though Govt has paid out £1billion to banks… 26% has been from fraud rather than credit failure… says Agnew.

“There’s a penny of income tax waiting to be claimed if we just woke up” but theres a “combination of arrogance, indolence, and ignorance” says minister as he resigns, saying taking fraud seriously would give a sporting chance of some tax cuts… “Thank you & goodbye!”

… flip side to this, summarised by Economic Secretary @JohnGlenUK last week is that the Government accepted a certain risk of fraud “in good conscience” to get money out to as many businesses that needed it as possible within days rather than months…

hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2022-0…

.. so all becomes matter of degree. Lord Agnew’s particular beef is even accepting speed/ due diligence trade off, it is very incompetent to allow companies that didnt even exist pre-pandemic, to get state money on this scale…

& big warning re banks not trying to recoup cash

For clarity, Lord Agnew expressly said that his decision was only about this fraud issue, and not the wider political difficulties in Downing Street for the PM.

Further detail in Lord Agnew’s resignation letter…
“Last week a foolish decision was made to kill off the prospect of an economic crime bill…” which would have helped tackle fraud and save taxpayers money, he says…

Called for by a cross party group of MPs, last year