Coronavirus Grant Schemes: Fraud

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

I am of course very concerned about businesses that are struggling and have been in difficulty, but I am pleased that the economy has recovered far quicker than many anticipated it would this time two years ago, and I am pleased that unemployment is at about 4.1%, rather than the 12% that was anticipated at the start of this crisis. There is no complacency from this Government, and there is an absolute determination to support businesses in getting back on their feet and trading. That is why we put in place so many interventions, which were designed in different ways to maximise the support to businesses and individuals across this country.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

The Government say time and again that support during the pandemic for the people who fell through the gap between the job retention scheme and the self-employed scheme would be too difficult to administer because of the risk of fraud. We now know that, simultaneously, companies that were defrauding taxpayers were being supported. We are left to conclude that the decision not to help those 3 million people was simply political. Those small businesses, sole traders and entrepreneurs should be the driving force of the UK’s economic recovery in the months and years ahead. What impact has this lack of support had on those sectors, and what will the Government do to support them going forward?

[John Glen]

The hon. Lady points to the fact that none of these schemes was perfect. She recognises implicitly that checks against data to verify people’s identity were necessary to ensure that they were suitable recipients of taxpayers’ funds. Unfortunately that meant that some were not able to secure the support that they sought. Where we can, we have moved forward and iterated these schemes, focusing and targeting them on the sectors of the economy that were most hit at different stages in this crisis, but I concede that unfortunately we were not able to help everyone, as we would have liked.