Lord Sikka
Main Page: Lord Sikka (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Sikka's debates with the Leader of the House
(2 years, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberI do not accept the premise that lenders are failing on fraud, and, of course, the noble Lord, Lord Patel, will know that I am not in a position to name individual lenders. However, lenders continue to work closely with the Government on counterfraud, including recovering £1.2 million on facilities identified as fraudulent so far. It is important that lenders are held accountable for taxpayers’ money, and all lenders continue to be subject to a robust audit process by the British Business Bank.
My Lords, two 30-second checks would have saved the Government billions of pounds. First, no one can open an ISA account without providing a national insurance number, but the Government did not require that information from anyone seeking furlough support. Secondly, all applicants for Covid loans should have been required to provide an HMRC reference number. That would have killed off all dormant companies and offshore tax haven companies. Will the Minister please explain why these two 30-second checks were not applied?
That is a very fair question and of course the sort of detailed question that I cannot answer. In terms of the fraud that we are looking to identify as part of the loan book, as of 17 December 2021 some £67 million worth of claims had been settled for the loan scheme. Of those, £13 million for 337 facilities had been flagged by lenders as suspected fraud. That is the sort of detail that we want to get into.