Extracts from Treasury
Questions
(Glasgow Central)
(SNP): Lord Agnew’s evidence to the Treasury Committee last
week was a damning indictment of this Tory Government’s “terrible
complacency”—his words—about fraud and protecting public money,
and he does not buy what the Minister says about working at pace
either. anticipates that there will be
an “avalanche of claims” from the banks on the state guarantee of
the bounce back loan scheme arriving at the Treasury in the
coming weeks, so can the Minister tell the House what actions he
is taking to prevent yet further billions of public money from
waltzing out the door in the midst of a cost of living
crisis?
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury ( ): On the hon. Lady’s
point, the Government set up the £100 million taxpayer protection
taskforce at the Budget back in March 2021, and that taskforce is
expected to recover between £800 million and £1 billion from
fraudulent or incorrect payments over the next two years. That
builds on the work that has already been done, which saw Her
Majesty’s Revenue and Customs recover £536 million in 2020-21.
Other agencies of the state are also involved in this important
work. The National Crime
Agency has made 17 arrests, 106 directors have been
disqualified as of February 2022, there have been 48 bankruptcy
restrictions and 13 companies have been wound up in the public
interest in relation to bounce back loans.
(Exeter) (Lab): What steps he is taking to
tackle illicit finance.
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (): We continue to review and
reform our regulatory and enforcement approach to ensure that, as
illicit finance evolves, our responses do too. We have announced
an unprecedented package of sanctions, including against
prominent Russian oligarchs. Last night, we brought forward the
Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022 to crack
down further, and we will continue to do further work on the
economic crime Bill in the next session. We have also brought a
new kleptocracy cell into the National Crime
Agency to tackle those explicit threats.
Extract from Commons
debate on Ukraine
(Maidenhead) (Con):...My second
ask is on the need to deal with the criminal gangs. Europol and
Interpol almost certainly need to be involved, as do the various
police and law enforcement agencies throughout Europe. There will
be a key role for our National Crime
Agency which I believe should take the lead. I
hope that if it has not already done so, the Home Office will
take the issue up with the National Crime
Agency and make sure that it has the resources it
needs to deal with the issue. I also hope that the NCA and the
Home Office recognise the urgency and importance of the issue of
the trafficking of children...
For context, CLICK HERE
