Economic Crime: Planned Government Bill

Mark Pawsey Excerpts

Wednesday 26th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

We have invested in a number of schemes, including an investment in the National Investigation Service to boost its capacity to investigate cases of serious fraud, especially within the bounce back loan scheme. It received £5 million in the 2020 spending review and made recoveries worth £3.1 million in 2021-22, exceeding its targets. It has investigations into bounce back loan frauds and other areas, and we will continue to work with it.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

I know that the Minister will agree that my constituents have the right to expect that victims of economic crime will get the same redress as for other crimes, including where the victims are taxpayers. He will also welcome the many comments that I have had from businesses in my constituency about the speed of the support that was made available to prevent failures. In respect of Government-backed loans during the pandemic, does he think it would be helpful for the British Business Bank to be required to release performance data on the lenders to provide transparency on banks’ activities at the time?

[Paul Scully]

I thank my hon. Friend for all his work throughout the pandemic. In his position as a member of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, he has been asking probing questions. With the British Business Bank, we have tried to get the balance right between the transparency required to tackle the issue and the speed at which we can act, so that we are not consuming too much of its resources. It is early days in terms of fraud and recovery, but yes, data will become available.