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UK minister resigns over "woeful" attempts to stop COVID-19 loan fraud

Published 24/01/2022, 17:23
Updated 24/01/2022, 17:25

LONDON (Reuters) - A British junior government minister resigned on Monday in protest at what he said were woeful efforts to stop the fraudulent abuse of government coronavirus support schemes.

Theodore Agnew, who sits in parliament's upper house, said he was quitting his post as a minister in the Treasury and Cabinet Office departments. Part of his role included oversight over spending and reducing fraud.

The government last week defended its record of providing support to businesses during the pandemic, disputing reports that it had written off 4.3 billion pounds ($5.8 billion) in fraud across more than 80 billion pounds of job support given by the Treasury, but acknowledging that some fraud had occurred.

However, Agnew said oversight of some other schemes - administered by the British Business Bank and the business ministry - had been "woeful", and that the Treasury had shown little interest in the wider consequences of fraud.

"Given that I'm the minister for counter-fraud, it feels somewhat dishonest to stay on in that role if I'm incapable of doing it properly, let alone defending our track record," Agnew told the House of Lords, listing his efforts to raise a number of problems through official channels.

The National Audit Office, which scrutinises public-sector spending, said in December that the government had failed to guard properly against fraud in its 47 billion-pound ($63 billion) COVID emergency lending programme for small businesses, opening itself up to billions of pounds of losses.

The business ministry estimated that around 4.9 billion pounds of the loan claims had been fraudulent, the NAO said.

"Schoolboy errors were made," Agnew said. "For example, allowing over 1,000 companies to receive the bounce-back loans that were not even trading when COVID struck."

At the end of his statement, Agnew walked out of the debating chamber, drawing applause from opposition lawmakers for his parting words: "I hope that, as a virtually unknown minister beyond this place, giving up my career might prompt others more important than me to get behind this and sort it out ... thank you and goodbye."

The finance and business ministries and the British Business Bank declined to make any immediate comment.

($1 = 0.7430 pounds)

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