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Minister resigns over Covid fraud mishandling
Lord Agnew, a Conservative minister in the House of Lords, has resigned over the mishandling of Covid loans during the pandemic.
The Tory peer accused the Treasury of having “little interest in the consequences of fraud to our society,” and that “a combination of arrogance, indolence and ignorance” was “freezing the government machine,” the BBC reported.
He also accused the government of making “schoolboy errors” by giving loans to more than 1,000 companies that were not trading when the pandemic hit the UK.
The minister read out his resignation in the House of Lords yesterday (January 24) in response to a question from Labour about Covid loans written off by the Treasury.
Figures released by HMRC showed fraudsters have collected some £5.8bn from furlough and other business relief schemes since the start of the pandemic. The Treasury has suggested it will only get back around £1.5bn of that, leaving £4.3bn missing.
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