Rachel Reeves: To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent estimate he has made of the (a) value and (b) proportion of loans made through the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan scheme that will not be repaid.
Rachel Reeves: I beg to move, That this House agrees with the remarks of Lord Agnew of Oulton in his resignation letter that the Government’s record on tackling fraud is lamentable; recognises the vast amount of taxpayers’ money that has been lost to waste and fraud since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, including the estimated £4.3 billion recently written off from Treasury-backed Covid business...
Rachel Reeves: It was nice to see a Government Minister with a bit of integrity doing the right thing and resigning because of the errors that the Government are making. Let us look at the details. On 12 January, the following details were published on gov.uk: £5.8 billion of fraud, with—yes—£500 million already retrieved and up to £1 billion to be clawed back by the end of 2023. That leaves an...
Rachel Reeves: My hon. Friend is exactly right. The Government say that they need to raise taxes to fund public services, and yet at the same time they are writing off billions of pounds-worth of taxpayers’ money. That is why I say it is an affront to taxpayers and to all those businesses who were excluded from Government support when they most needed it. They now know that criminals got their hands on...
Rachel Reeves: My hon. Friend is absolutely right that it is good value for money to invest in HMRC to get that money back, but the truth is that it did not need to be like this in the first place. The Government could have avoided these enormous levels of waste and fraud, but they set up the covid support scheme without proper checks and balances. It is not beyond the wit of Government to direct money...
Rachel Reeves: As an hon. Member mentioned earlier today, this morning was the first we had seen of the Chancellor at the Dispatch Box since the beginning of December—perhaps we were lucky to see him today. Disturbing reports of court cases are now emerging. They reveal how an organised crime leader, with no less than 48 previous criminal convictions, was handed £50,000 of taxpayers’ money. If only...
Rachel Reeves: My hon. Friend speaks powerfully. I would like the Minister to explain, at the Dispatch Box, why drugs gangs got tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money when my hon. Friend’s constituents could not get a penny. The Chancellor and other Ministers were warned repeatedly about the risk of fraud. In June 2020, the Chancellor was advised by the Fraud Advisory Panel, Transparency...
Rachel Reeves: I understand that MPs want to represent businesses employing people in their constituencies, but it is the role of the Chancellor and the Government to make sure that money goes only to people who deserve it, not fraudsters. The hon. Gentleman was a member of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, which I chaired. The Committee did ask the Government to get money to...
Rachel Reeves: My hon. Friend makes an important point. Her council in Liverpool and all our councils have lost money, and this Government are handing it out to criminals. Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money has been written off, but it was not the Chancellor’s money to write off; it is the public’s. The Government have clearly lost their grip. We must restore faith and confidence in how...
Rachel Reeves: Lord Agnew did not resign from the board of a bank; he resigned as a Government Minister because of “schoolboy errors…indolence and ignorance.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 24 January 2022; Vol. 818, c. 20-21.] How does the hon. Gentleman explain to constituents in Thirsk and Malton that they will be £1,175 worse off in April because of the energy price hike and the tax...
Rachel Reeves: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. What we are talking about would be appalling even if it were a one-off example of waste, but it has become the hallmark of this Government that they waste money and treat taxpayers’ cash with a lack of respect: £13 billion was wasted on failed defence procurements, including £4.8 billion of taxpayers’ money handed out for cancelled contracts. If that...
Rachel Reeves: To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how much and what proportion of the funds the Exchequer has paid out to lenders because of defaults in the bounce back loan scheme is a result of fraud.
Rachel Reeves: To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent estimate he has made of the value of fraudulent loans made through the bounce back loans scheme.
Rachel Reeves: To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what estimate he has made of the value of fraudulent loans made through the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme.
Rachel Reeves: To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent estimate he has made of the (a) value and (b) proportion of loans made through the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme which will not be repaid.
Rachel Reeves: To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what his estimate is of the (a) value and (b) proportion of loans made through the bounce back loan scheme which will not be repaid.
Rachel Reeves: Mr Speaker: “Schoolboy errors… a combination of arrogance, indolence and ignorance… nothing less than woeful.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 24 January 2022; Vol. 818, c. 20-21.] Those are not my words, but those of former Treasury Minister, Lord Agnew. Some £4.3 billion of taxpayers’ money has been written off as a result of the Chancellor’s fraud failures; a thousand...
Rachel Reeves: It is in black and white on the Government’s own website still today, and in the Government accounts—£4.3 billion written off. Despite the Chancellor’s words, “written off” means giving up on that money. This is just the tip of the iceberg. [Interruption.] It is on the Government’s website and in the Government’s accounts. Can he tell us how many of the covid fraud cases have...
Rachel Reeves: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate she has made of the number of people who have been affected by the underpayment of benefits after transitioning from incapacity benefit to employment and support allowance in Leeds West constituency.
Rachel Reeves: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate she has made of the number of people who have been affected by the underpayment of benefits after transitioning from incapacity benefit to employment and support allowance in the Yorkshire and the Humber region.