Conservative minister Lord Agnew’s dramatic resignation due to his dissatisfaction over efforts to tackle COVID loan fraud drew stark focus to the issue last week. Chancellor Rishi Sunak has been forced to defend his handling of pandemic support schemes, amid mounting criticism. Financial journalist and executive director of TaxWatch, George Turner, joins Alex Andreou to explain the problem, the consequences for the Government, and why such concerns need to be taken more seriously.

“HMRC has always had a policy of ‘pay now, check later’, but they didn’t have the capacity to check with Covid.”
“For HMRC, going through with Brexit in the middle of the pandemic was madness.”
“We need to invest a lot more in law enforcement for fraud, and the Treasury has a big role to play in that.”
“We never thought about fraud as a big problem, the pandemic will hopefully change that.”

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Presented by Alex Andreou. The Group Editor is Andrew Harrison. The Lead Producer is Jacob Jarvis. The Producers are Jacob Archbold, Jelena Sofronijevic and Alex Rees. Audio production by Robin Leeburn. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production

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