Tulip Siddiq
Main Page: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)Department Debates - View all Tulip Siddiq's debates with the HM Treasury
(2 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
John Glen
I thank my hon. Friend for her question. As she will know from the letter that I sent her this morning and from our conversation with industry representatives together a few months ago, this is quite a challenging issue to resolve. I cannot direct the banks to open, and keep open, these accounts, but I will continue to engage with her and with UK Finance to see whether more progress can be made in the coming weeks.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
The Government have lost £4.3 billion of taxpayers’ money through fraudulent covid schemes. Now we learn that a large chunk of that money is going into the hands of terrorists, organised crime gangs and drug dealers. Will the Minister reassure me that he is taking the reports seriously and update the House on the total number of investigations the Government are undertaking that relate to covid fraud?
John Glen
I can absolutely reassure the hon. Lady that the Government take the issue very seriously. That is why at previous fiscal events the Chancellor has invested £100 million in a taskforce to deal with it. When we designed a number of the interventions, protecting taxpayers was a real consideration. It is also the case that we needed to act swiftly to assist those businesses and if we had not made some of those interventions at the time, many businesses would have gone under. We continue to engage carefully on the matter.