MPs on the Public Accounts Committee have criticised the department’s failure to tackle the debt problem and the lack of justification of why it is not pursuing the debt, with only £10m repaid of a total £985m. In total £2.2bn of the grants were fraudulent or paid out by mistake.

Fraud and error in the early business support grant scheme was estimated at £985m (8.4%) of the total £25bn paid out while abuse of the bounce back loans scheme hit £1.12bn (8%).

There appeared to be little motivation to deal with the debt as the department ‘continues to make slow progress on its counter fraud activities related to the bounce back loan scheme, and its lack of curiosity about lenders’ performance increases the risk of losses for the taxpayer’, MPs said.

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