A report by the government’s spending watchdog estimated that £4.9bn of the £47bn that was given out as part of the Covid-19 small business support scheme was fraudulent and that the government only put in place anti-fraud measures once more than £28bn had already been paid out.

The NAO reported that checks to ensure that a company was not applying for more than one bounce back loan were not put in place until June 2020, a month after the scheme was launched and by then 61% of the money that was to be lent under the scheme had already been paid out to businesses.