UK minister resigns in protest at handling of fraudulent Covid loans
The minister responsible for efficiency has dramatically resigned his post publicly in parliament, saying he was unable to defend the way the government handled fraudulent Covid business loans.
“Given that I am the minister for counter-fraud, it would be somewhat dishonest to stay on in that role if I am incapable of doing it properly,” Theodore Agnew, a Cabinet Office minister whose brief also covers the Treasury, told the Lords.
“It is for this reason that I have sadly decided to tender my resignation as a minister across the Treasury and Cabinet Office with immediate effect.”
Agnew, a life peer since 2017, was responding to a Labour urgent question about the Treasury’s decision last week to write off £4.3bn in Covid payments lost to fraud.
Asked by Labour peer Denis Tunnicliffe if he could provide an accurate figure for how much had been written off, Agnew said he was speaking to defend the government, adding: “But I will only be able to do that in part.”
Oversight of Covid loans by the business department and the British Business Bank, which oversaw the scheme, had been “nothing less than woeful”, Agnew said.
“They have been assisted by the Treasury, who appear to have no knowledge or little interest in the consequences of fraud to our economy or our society,” he said, adding that two counter-fraud staff at the business department would not “engage constructively” with his counter-fraud team in the Cabinet Office.
He said: “Schoolboy errors were made, for example allowing over a thousand companies to receive bounceback loans that were not even trading when Covid struck.”
Agnew insisted that his decision had nothing to do with “far more dramatic political events being played out across Westminster” relating to Boris Johnson
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