Tuesday 13th April 2021

(3 years ago)

Commons Chamber
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.

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Paul Scully Portrait Paul Scully
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My hon. Friend is absolutely right: any business applying for any of the Government schemes—I have talked about the accreditation required to deliver those schemes—has to go through a robust procedure. HMRC and other organisations will indeed make sure that we are hot on fraud, because this is taxpayers’ money that we are talking about. That is why, in the instance that this question is about, it is important to remember that the Chancellor rejected the suggestion that was put forward. The process is doing its job.

Sarah Olney Portrait Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)
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When an urgent question of a similar nature came before the House just before the recess, I asked the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy whether a list of all the organisations that have received loans—whether they were under the bounce back loan scheme, CBILS or any of the other schemes—would be made available, because the Minister has said previously that that will be done “in due course”. When I asked the Secretary of State on that occasion, he said to me that he will “try to see” what can be done to put that list of businesses in the public domain. I hope the Minister agrees that many of these questions are arising because of a lack of transparency in the way that some of the support has been awarded. Will he tell me how the Secretary of State is getting on with publishing that list?

Paul Scully Portrait Paul Scully
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As the hon. Lady will know, at the time of delivery we were trying to deliver money to businesses as quickly as possible. The fact that businesses have accessed support—especially the larger loans under CLBILS—will appear in their accounts, and will obviously be reported to the European Union should that be required for state aid purposes.