Feeble oversight of UK’s Covid loan schemes was a gift to fraudsters
When it was announced in the first days of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, described the furlough scheme as “as one of the most significant economic interventions at any point in the history of the British state and by any government anywhere in the world”.
Boris Johnson and Sunak were proud of a trailblazing scheme that would pay 80% of the wages of up to 11.7 million workers up to a maximum of £2,500 a month. “We have put aside ideology and orthodoxy to mobilise the full power and resources of the British state,” Sunak said from the 10 Downing Street lectern.
Furlough payments were just one of a number of schemes hastily introduced by the government in the early stages of the pandemic to support individuals and businesses financially. Others included the self-employed income support programme, “eat out to help out” – and the business Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS).
In the House of Lords on Monday, Theodore Agnew, the minister responsible for Whitehall efficiency and counter-fraud, singled out lax oversight of the BBLS in his dramatic resignation speech.
Lord Agnew criticised oversight of Covid loans by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the British Business Bank, a state lender, saying it had been “nothing less than woeful”. He added that Sunak’s department, the Treasury, appeared to have “no knowledge or little interest” in the consequences of fraud.
The warning signs have long been visible, such as multiple companies being formed at the same address. And the first prosecutions have started trickling through.
The government has long pointed to the wartime footing under which its support schemes were rolled out, and the urgent need to pump cash into the
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