Lord Watts
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Coronavirus Grants: Fraud
Lord Watts Excerpts(3 years ago)
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Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My understanding is that BEIS has invested significantly in the expansion of its counterfraud function, in terms both of increased resource and, critically, of capabilities. A key role of its counterfraud function will be to embed a governed and risk-assessed approach throughout BEIS and the arm’s-length bodies.
Lord Watts (Lab)
Yesterday, the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, was accountable and did the right thing, but is not the Chancellor of the Exchequer ultimately responsible for this mess and should he not resign?
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
No, he should not resign. I go back to the most fundamental point, which is that we had to act particularly quickly back in lockdown 1 to support businesses. As a result, we put in the £400 billion package of economic support that I referred to earlier. That protected more than 14.5 million jobs and thousands of businesses. It is a great credit to the Chancellor that he took those bold steps.