On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Seventy-six days have passed since this House agreed to the terms of a Humble Address compelling the Government to publish the minutes and notes of the meeting of 9 April 2020 between Lord Bethell, Owen Paterson and Randox representatives, and all correspondence relating to two specified Government contracts awarded to that company. Sixty-seven days have passed since the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care promised, in writing, that the Government would respond to the House no later than the end of January. Given that today is 1 February, and taking into account the fact that the Chair has expressed an expectation on the Government to fulfil their obligations under that Humble Address in a timely fashion, is it in order for Ministers to fail to meet a self-imposed deadline to comply with the instructions of this House? If not, what consequences should befall those on the Government Benches who failed to keep their promise?

The Secretary of State for Health notified me yesterday that he will confirm that the relevant materials will be laid by the February recess. If not, I am sure that the hon. Member would use an urgent question and other ways to ensure that they are delivered, but that is the state of play at the moment.

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Yesterday the Prime Minister answered questions in this House on the initial Sue Gray report, and we saw the usual bluster and thrashing-about stream of unconsciousness that we are used to. But in reply to one particular question, I think from my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition, in thrashing about, he threw in the question of Jimmy Savile—and actually I think it was found out that he was factually wrong on that. There are many, many victims of that awful, awful person, and I felt that for him to use that scandal and that tragedy in the way that he did was not only inappropriate and tasteless but perhaps out of order. I seek your guidance on his use of that awful, awful example.

I remind the House that I am not responsible for Members’ contributions and will seek not to intervene unless something is said that is disorderly. Procedurally, nothing disorderly occurred, but such allegations should not be made lightly, especially in view of the guidance of “Erskine May” about good temper and moderation being the characteristics of parliamentary debate.

While they may not have been disorderly, I am far from satisfied that the comments in question were appropriate on this occasion. I want to see more compassionate, reasonable politics in this House, and that sort of comment can only inflame opinions and generate disregard for this House. I want a nicer Parliament, and the only way we can get a nicer Parliament is by being more honourable in the debates that we have. Please let us show each other respect as well as tolerance going forward.

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I rise in relation to media reports this morning of new education investment areas across England. This announcement was, once again, made to the press instead of to this House. The Government are disregarding their duties to Parliament and short-changing the people by preventing their representatives from questioning Ministers on this. Our constituents will be reading about these changes without access to information about which areas will be affected or the criteria for extra funding. I would be really grateful if I could have your guidance on this, please.

I thank the hon. Member for giving me notice of his point of order. He will appreciate that I have not had the opportunity to look into the detail of the case he has raised. I have made my position clear on the principle that important announcements of policies should be made first to this Chamber. I expect, Members expect and our constituents expect that we should hear it first—and the ministerial code, as we keep stressing, requires it. Unfortunately, I say to Members, I have not got power over the ministerial code, but that is where it lies.

I expect urgency in that anything of this type should be brought to this House first for constituents of all parties. You were elected to hear it here. We have got to remind the Government that they are accountable to this House and not to the media. I am very worried and very concerned about where this House is going. I take seriously the way that it is going. Unfortunately, the public out there somehow think I have got this magic power, but you, the Members, give me the power. If you are not happy with the power I have got, it is in your hands to change it.

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I congratulate you on what you have just said. Is there anything we can do about Ministers who are serial offenders? The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport keeps doing this. Only this week, she announced a whole new package of investment in the arts in the northern regions without coming to this House. She is a serial offender. Could we do something about her?

I think I have made my position very clear, and I do not want to extend this into a debate. However, I recognise the frustration of Members in all parts of the House. This is a problem that we have to deal with: the House has the right to hear things first.

Let us not delay any more. We now come to the ten-minute rule motion.

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to give social housing tenants the right to continuity of secure tenancy in circumstances when they have to move because of a threat to the personal safety of the tenant or someone in their household; to place associated responsibilities on local authorities and social housing providers; and for connected purposes.

If a member of our household were threatened with violence, and the police advised us that we had to move straight away in order to stay safe, any one of us would find that terrifying and bewildering. We might reasonably expect to receive support; we would not expect to lose our home altogether and find ourselves in the homelessness system. However, that is what happened to my constituent Georgia when gang members came to her home and threatened her teenage son.

Georgia is a housing association tenant who had lived in her home for nine years. She and her children were very happy in their home, which she had recently decorated. Then her neighbours told her that one afternoon while she was at work, they had heard loud banging on her door. Georgia eventually coaxed out of her son the information that he had witnessed something that some local gang members had not wanted him to see, and they had come to her home looking for him.

Georgia contacted the police, who told her that she had to move, immediately, for her family’s safety. She got in touch with her housing association, who told her that it was the council’s responsibility to provide emergency housing. The council placed Georgia and her children in temporary accommodation. The temporary accommodation was in another borough, was of poor quality and was very expensive. Georgia’s children did not have enough space, the flat was damp and dirty, it was hard for her children to do their homework, and Georgia started to suffer from panic attacks which affected her work.

By the time Georgia’s friend got in touch with me because she was worried about Georgia’s health and the wellbeing of her children, they had been in the temporary accommodation for six months. Worse than that, her housing association had started the process of ending her tenancy because she was no longer living in her flat. The consequence of this, in the context of the UK’s housing crisis, would have been Georgia and her children being added to the statistics of homeless households, in temporary accommodation and on the housing waiting list.

No one should become homeless because their child is threatened. In one London borough, 47 housing association tenants have required homelessness assistance from the council as a result of violence since 2019. Across the country, that means that thousands of families have to leave their homes each year, with their secure tenancies potentially at risk, on top of having to rebuild their lives in a new area.

Homelessness is fundamentally destabilising, involving the loss of a sanctuary and of a place in one’s community. It is deeply traumatising to have to make an emergency move because of a threat of violence and start again somewhere else. Our housing system should do everything possible to help families in such circumstances make the transition to a new permanent home as soon as possible, to limit the harm caused by the threat. My Bill would do that. It would require social housing landlords, whether councils or housing associations, to protect the tenancy rights of their tenants who have to move owing to a threat of violence. It would also confer a new duty on social housing landlords to co-operate with each other in circumstances in which a tenant, for safety reasons, has to move to an area where his or her current landlord does not own any property. There are some good examples of co-operation already, such as the pan-London housing reciprocal, and I commend that work, but for as long as this remains voluntary, some tenants will fall through the gaps.

I am delighted that this Bill has the support of Shelter and the National Housing Federation. Shelter has highlighted the case of Corey Junior Davis, “CJ”, whose mum had asked her housing association for an urgent move after her son had been threatened and had told her that he feared for his life. CJ’s mum had done everything possible to keep her son safe, including sending him to stay with relatives in a different area, but six months after her initial request, while they were still waiting for a move, CJ was shot and killed. I have also met constituents who have sent their children away to keep them safe, because they fear the consequences of being placed in temporary accommodation and losing their tenancy. That is not a choice any parent should have to make.

We have a housing crisis in the UK, and we need a comprehensive plan to tackle it involving the building of genuinely affordable, secure social housing and reforming the private rented sector to give greater security and stability to private tenants. I pay tribute to councils and housing associations across the country that work tirelessly to provide social housing and to support their tenants, but there is more we can do, right now, to stop many families entering the homelessness system by preventing families that already have the security of a social housing tenancy from losing that security and being added to housing waiting lists. This is not asking social landlords to find additional properties, because the people who would be protected by this Bill are already their tenants. It would simply require them to do everything possible to limit the harm of the traumatic event that has resulted in a need to move home.

In the end, following my intervention, Georgia’s housing association found her a new home in a safe area, but the months in temporary accommodation took a devastating toll on Georgia and her children. What started as one traumatic incident spiralled into long-term consequences.

The provisions in this Bill would apply in any situation where the police decide that a tenant should move because of a threat of violence, including: domestic abuse where the perpetrator does not live at the same address as the victim; an escalating neighbour dispute; or the threat of violence to a young person in the household. It would not have any impact on the existing rights and responsibilities of either the landlord or the tenant under the terms of the tenancy.

This Bill enjoys cross-party support, and I am grateful to all the co-sponsors and the shadow Housing Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook)—I know he has seen similar cases in his constituency—for their support. I am grateful to the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the hon. Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes), for attending the Chamber to listen to the argument for this Bill.

I hope the Government will agree with us that no one should be made homeless because they or a member of their household is threatened, and I hope they will support this small reform that will make a really big difference to vulnerable families, such as Georgia’s, across the country.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,

That Helen Hayes, Mr Clive Betts, Bob Blackman, Ms Karen Buck, Stella Creasy, John Cryer, Florence Eshalomi, Robert Halfon, Dr Rupa Huq, Caroline Lucas, Luke Pollard and Christina Rees present the Bill.

Helen Hayes accordingly presented the Bill.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 25 February, and to be printed (Bill 243).

I beg to move,

That this House agrees with the remarks of Lord Agnew of Oulton in his resignation letter that the Government’s record on tackling fraud is lamentable; recognises the vast amount of taxpayers’ money that has been lost to waste and fraud since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, including the estimated £4.3 billion recently written off from Treasury-backed Covid business support schemes; notes the Government’s unacceptable record of poor procurement over the last decade, including £13 billion wasted on defence projects; further notes the warnings the Chancellor received in 2020 regarding the serious weaknesses allowing for public funds to be diverted to criminal enterprises; calls on the Government to set out a strategy to recover all taxpayers’ money obtained by criminal groups and to fully engage with a thorough National Crime Agency investigation into all issues related to the fraudulent exploitation of the covid-19 support schemes; and further calls on the Chancellor of the Exchequer to make a statement to this House before 31 March 2022 detailing how much taxpayers’ money has been successfully retrieved.

Millions across our country are facing a cost of living crisis, but while many are worried about soaring energy and food bills, the Government are preparing to hike taxes for working people and businesses. It will be the biggest tax burden in 70 years, yet while the Government are delving into people’s pockets for their hard-earned cash with one hand, they are throwing it away with the other. With endemic waste and fraud, taxpayers’ money is being poured down the drain. We see billions of pounds of waste on vanity projects, crony contracts and poor procurement. Basic checks and measures on who was handed covid support are completely ignored. We have had £4.3 billion in fraud written off by the Chancellor—that is a third of the tax hike that the Conservatives are about to impose on working people and the businesses that employ them.

The truth is, that is only the tip of the iceberg. That is why Labour has brought this motion before the House, calling on the Government to come back by 31 March with a clear answer on the true extent of fraud in their covid support schemes and to report back on how much taxpayers’ money has been clawed back from the criminals. It is because the Chancellor has lost a grip—and he seems to have fled the scene—that the motion calls on the Government to allow the National Crime Agency full access to investigate all aspects of fraud within covid support, not just the mere 13 cases that the Chancellor suggested they are looking at.

Was my hon. Friend as surprised as me not only by the terms with which Lord Agnew, the Minister in the Lords, resigned—the “schoolboy errors” made—but to learn that the National Crime Agency was shooed away by the Treasury when it offered help to try to get back some of the fraudulently taken money?

It was nice to see a Government Minister with a bit of integrity doing the right thing and resigning because of the errors that the Government are making.

Let us look at the details. On 12 January, the following details were published on gov.uk: £5.8 billion of fraud, with—yes—£500 million already retrieved and up to £1 billion to be clawed back by the end of 2023. That leaves an outstanding £4.3 billion of fraud written off by the Government. The grants number refers to the assessment of the losses made by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs from just three schemes: the coronavirus job retention scheme, which was £5.3 billion; the self-employment income support scheme, which was £493 million; and eat out to help out, which was £71 million. That fraud adds up to a combined £5.8 billion. In addition, page 121 of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy’s annual report states that bounce back loan fraud is estimated to be 11% of the total. When the Minister comes to the Dispatch Box, will he tell us whether he recognises those figures? Does he understand what an affront that is to taxpayers and to those who were excluded from Government support during the pandemic?

The shadow Chancellor is making an excellent speech. Does she agree that not only is it a disgrace to write off all those billions, but, to add insult to injury, working people will have to pay for that with the national insurance tax rise and through a lack of help on energy bills, which is another worry for households all around the country?

My hon. Friend is exactly right. The Government say that they need to raise taxes to fund public services, and yet at the same time they are writing off billions of pounds-worth of taxpayers’ money. That is why I say it is an affront to taxpayers and to all those businesses who were excluded from Government support when they most needed it. They now know that criminals got their hands on the money while genuine businesses and self-employed people could not get a penny.

Given the rate of return for every pound spent by HMRC in compliance, is my hon. Friend puzzled about why money is not being invested to get back furlough fraud?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that it is good value for money to invest in HMRC to get that money back, but the truth is that it did not need to be like this in the first place. The Government could have avoided these enormous levels of waste and fraud, but they set up the covid support scheme without proper checks and balances. It is not beyond the wit of Government to direct money where it is needed without giving it to organised criminals and fraudsters. It is incredible that the Government were dishing out lump sums of £50,000 to businesses that were not even trading at the start of the pandemic. It just does not make any sense. The Treasury did not even require checks with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to see that self-certifying businesses had made a tax return as proof that they were genuine. What on earth was going on in Government? Those checks take just a matter of minutes. The result of those failures was that criminals created fake companies to receive public money and that is a disgrace.

My hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor is making an incredibly powerful speech on the eye-watering sums that have been wasted by this Government. The amount of funding that has been lost in Barnsley since 2018 is £30 million. In that context, is it not outrageous that the Chancellor, who cannot even be bothered to turn up today, has wasted so much public money?

As an hon. Member mentioned earlier today, this morning was the first we had seen of the Chancellor at the Dispatch Box since the beginning of December—perhaps we were lucky to see him today.

Disturbing reports of court cases are now emerging. They reveal how an organised crime leader, with no less than 48 previous criminal convictions, was handed £50,000 of taxpayers’ money. If only that were a one-off case. The same judge had seen, two months prior, a case where a drugs gang had been given a £25,000 Treasury bounce back loan. Well, good for them to bounce back! What about those who were excluded?

I thank my hon. Friend for making an incredible speech. What we cannot forget are the stories we have heard, like the one from a woman in my constituency who had set up a business as a driving instructor. The rules the Government set meant that she was entitled to no compensation and no support whatever. She was left with no income and had to rely on food banks. As my hon. Friend says, at the same time that drug barons were being given taxpayers’ money, people in my constituency were given absolutely nothing and were forced to rely on charity. It is a disgrace.

My hon. Friend speaks powerfully. I would like the Minister to explain, at the Dispatch Box, why drugs gangs got tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money when my hon. Friend’s constituents could not get a penny.

The Chancellor and other Ministers were warned repeatedly about the risk of fraud. In June 2020, the Chancellor was advised by the Fraud Advisory Panel, Transparency International, Spotlight on Corruption and the former director of the Serious Fraud Office that there were

“serious weaknesses that enable fraudsters and corrupt insiders to exploit the bounce back loan scheme and the covid business interruption loan scheme.”

and that that would create a “risk to the taxpayer”. They offered to provide the Chancellor with information, advice and support to improve the control of the funds, yet it seems the Government were not interested in that advice.

Stripping away the political rhetoric, the hon. Lady is making some very serious points for the Government to consider. However, on reflection, does she now think it was wrong for her Labour colleagues in 2021 to call so readily for the Government to use taxpayers’ money to support GFG Alliance, which was subsequently investigated by the Serious Fraud Office?

I understand that MPs want to represent businesses employing people in their constituencies, but it is the role of the Chancellor and the Government to make sure that money goes only to people who deserve it, not fraudsters. The hon. Gentleman was a member of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, which I chaired. The Committee did ask the Government to get money to businesses that needed it, like those mentioned by Labour Members, but basic checks that could have been done in a matter of minutes were not done. He will know, because of this Government’s tax rises and the increase in energy prices, that an average household in his constituency will, from April, be £1,378 worse off.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the £4.3 billion that has been written off is a disgrace, given that the austerity that local authorities have suffered over the past 12 years has had a major impact on the people they serve and our communities?

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Her council in Liverpool and all our councils have lost money, and this Government are handing it out to criminals. Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money has been written off, but it was not the Chancellor’s money to write off; it is the public’s. The Government have clearly lost their grip. We must restore faith and confidence in how taxpayers’ money is spent.

We have a National Crime Agency in our country for a reason: to tackle serious and organised crime. It should be the National Crime Agency that the Government ring first on such occasions, but instead there are reports that they do not even want it to look into the matter. The Chancellor said earlier that just 13 cases are being looked at by the National Crime Agency. That is why Labour has brought our motion to the House today: to call on the Government not only to come back by 31 March with a clear answer about how much of their money has been clawed back from criminals, but to allow the National Crime Agency full access to investigate all aspects of fraud within covid support. The Government should not be resisting any effort whatever to retrieve taxpayers’ money and to hold people responsible. We need to know how it is so easy for organised criminals to steal from right under the Treasury’s nose.

As a point of correction, the hon. Lady says that the Chancellor said that only 13 cases were being looked into by the National Crime Agency, but what he said was that 13 people have been arrested. Many more cases have been looked into.

I think the hon. Lady is in danger of missing the point. Lord Agnew actually said that the Government did a very good job of rolling out the schemes; his problems were with the checks and balances afterwards on banks drawing on the guarantee. Two banks were responsible for 81% of claims on the guarantee. That is where our attention should be focused: what are the banks doing about getting the money back?

Lord Agnew did not resign from the board of a bank; he resigned as a Government Minister because of

“schoolboy errors…indolence and ignorance.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 24 January 2022; Vol. 818, c. 20-21.]

How does the hon. Gentleman explain to constituents in Thirsk and Malton that they will be £1,175 worse off in April because of the energy price hike and the tax increases from this Government, who all the while are giving money away to criminals? That is why Labour has brought our motion to the House.

The shadow Chancellor is giving an excellent speech exposing the systemic problems with the Government’s schemes. Does she share my concern that the emergency procurement procedures and the crony contracts given out for personal protective equipment meant that £280 million-worth of substandard masks were contracted for, with £100 million on unusable gowns and £200 million to Conservative party friends and donors, yet those shady and untransparent emergency procurement procedures are still being used?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. What we are talking about would be appalling even if it were a one-off example of waste, but it has become the hallmark of this Government that they waste money and treat taxpayers’ cash with a lack of respect: £13 billion was wasted on failed defence procurements, including £4.8 billion of taxpayers’ money handed out for cancelled contracts. If that waste of public money had been avoided, more money would surely have been available for our armed forces, whose budget was cut by the Chancellor in October.

As my hon. Friend says, that just scratches the surface. Some £3.5 billion went on crony contracts, £300,000 went from the levelling-up fund to save a Tory peer’s driveway and £500,000 went on the Foreign Secretary’s flight to Australia, ignoring her own advice from 2009:

“Every public sector worker should feel personal responsibility for the money they spend and the money they save. They should spend taxpayers’ money with at least the care they would give to their own.”

I do not know what care the Foreign Secretary gives to her own money, but I would not spend £500,000 of taxpayers’ money like that. Some £900,000 was spent on working out whether a bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland was remotely viable and cost-effective. I could have given that advice for nothing.

It all adds up to a total disrespect for taxpayers’ money—and it all matters, because if a Government Minister wastes money by letting it slip through the net into the hands of fraudsters and wastes huge sums of taxpayers’ money on vanity projects, they have to raise taxes to find the money. The fact that taxes are at a 70-year high is the other side of the coin from the waste that we are talking about. With one hand, the Government raise taxes; with the other, they throw away taxpayers’ money.

Labour would treat taxpayers’ money with respect. We care about value for money because we respect taxpayers and we respect our public services, which have been starved of funds by 12 years of Conservative Governments. We want to break our economy out of the cycle of low growth and high taxes. We will build a stronger economy, in which prosperity and security are enjoyed all across our country. That is why we will tax fairly, spend wisely and get our economy firing on all cylinders. People are facing a cost of living crisis. Labour’s answer is not to dip into their pockets even more or waste their money on vanity projects or fraud. As the Conservatives ask families and businesses to pay even more, the very least the Government can do is try to get their stolen money back. That is why I urge all Members to support the motion.

This is a Government who have been relentless in their efforts to protect lives and livelihoods throughout the pandemic, taking unprecedented steps to see the country through what have been difficult times for us all. It goes without saying that we took and continue to take our responsibilities to taxpayers extremely seriously. They rely on us to make decisions on their behalf in their best interests, and that is exactly what we do. As a Government, we have been consistent in doing exactly that, acting, in the words of the Chief Secretary, “quickly, effectively and responsibly”.

I will just make some progress.

I am sorry that Lord Agnew chose to resign from his position as a Minister in the Treasury and in the Cabinet Office, and I want to take this opportunity to thank him very much for the important work he did while he was in government. The Government have been working to achieve better quality government for citizens, with relentless focus on outcomes, ensuring every £1 of taxpayers’ money is spent well; ensuring policy making reflects the communities we serve through, for example, the movement of civil service jobs away from London to Darlington, Stoke, Preston and elsewhere; driving the post-Brexit procurement rules reform to make procurement more transparent, provide better services to citizens and deliver social value; and procuring ventilators at the beginning of the pandemic. We have focused on value for money and supporting the taxpayer.

The Minister is talking about good stewardship of public money, but was he as concerned as I was to read in the press that, under the Tory Tees Valley Mayor, the public share of the joint venture to develop and secure major industrial opportunities, which has had tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money invested in it, has been transferred to JC Musgrave Capital and Northern Land Management? Does that not raise major questions about how public moneys have been spent? Does he agree that, given wider concerns about governance and the vested interests of political donors, what is needed is an independent inquiry into the governance of the Tees Valley Combined Authority and the South Tees Development Corporation?

What I do know is that Ben Houchen is an excellent Mayor and Labour wishes that it had mayors like him.

Fraud is unacceptable wherever and however it is perpetrated. The Government remain determined to stamp it out. I can say that as a Minister and a former Attorney General, and as someone who prosecuted such cases in an earlier life—

I will make a little progress, if I may.

As the House will be aware, since March 2020, the Government have delivered a comprehensive multi-billion pound package to support households and businesses. Before I turn to specific measures that we are taking and have taken to combat fraud, it is worth reminding ourselves of three key facts. First, with regard to the covid schemes that we introduced, the vast majority of people did the right thing. They understood what the schemes were for and accessed them in a way that was wholly appropriate. Secondly, this was a once-in-a-generation event and I ask the House to accept that. Businesses were on the brink of collapse. They needed support really quickly—something that the Labour party understood and Labour Members were screaming about at the time. We were able to deliver that support, and to do so properly, in record time and in a way that the world was envious of.

Thirdly, the support worked. Many thousands of jobs were saved, and today we have a thriving labour market, with record low unemployment, the economy returning to its pre-pandemic size faster than expected, and you know what, Mr Speaker—the fastest-growing economy in the G7.

Clearly, the Government have given unprecedented levels of support to people, especially those in Rother Valley. So would the Minister condemn, as I condemn, Labour-run Rotherham Council, which handed back millions of pounds of discretionary funding to the Government because it could not get the money distributed fast enough? That is a waste of taxpayers’ money and giving the money back to the Government was a scandal.

That is a very peculiar happenstance that my hon. Friend rightly mentions. Other local authorities around the country made good use of that generous provision, and I think Rotherham have questions to answer.

On Lord Agnew of Oulton, who resigned over the fraudulent covid business loans, the good, decent Lord said that there was “zippo of detail” on how the Government plan to deal with the issue of business loans. Can the Minister say how the Government will claw back the £77 million loss on the eat out to help out scheme from the missing Chancellor?

If the hon. Gentleman will allow me to make some progress, he may hear about what the Government have been doing, and will continue to do.

The Government’s priority at the time was to get financial support to businesses. That was the alpha and omega of everything—it was to get that financial support to businesses, and their employees by extension, and as quickly as possible, to protect jobs and livelihoods. In total, we made available over £100 billion of loans and grants to over 1 million businesses, through bounce back loans, the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme, the coronavirus large business interruption loan scheme, and business grants. There were myriad schemes that we were using.

The Minister’s defence—that this was a pandemic and the Government had to act quickly—does not seem to hold any water when we know that back in 2014 there were problems with Companies House. There were problems with international fraud and money laundering, and problems with how easily businesses could be set up through Companies House, yet the Government have dragged their feet; they have not taken action. That was years before the pandemic hit the United Kingdom. Had the Government taken action when they knew about the problems with Companies House, we probably would not be dealing with the amount of fraud that we are right now.

As it happens, we have given, as a Government, over £60 million to Companies House to continue its necessary reforms and we have undertaken myriad measures to prevent the problems that the hon. Lady refers to.

The first lockdown came into force on 23 March 2020. By 24 May, just a couple of months later, we had already paid out almost £28 billion in loans, rising to £80 billion by the time that the schemes closed on 31 March 2021—astronomical support.

Much has been made of Lord Agnew’s resignation and we should take his resignation points very seriously. We should also acknowledge that he described the bounce back loan scheme, in his resignation piece to the Financial Times, as an “important and successful intervention”. Is not his real point that we need to make sure that checks and balances have been followed by all banks who were given the responsibility of distributing these loans?

I agree with my hon. Friend on that, and also on Lord Agnew, who is a noble man and was an excellent Minister. The sheer volume of schemes introduced and the speed with which they were designed and implemented meant it simply was not possible at the time to prevent every instance of fraud and error, and I accept that. However—

I must make some progress. The measures that we implemented to minimise fraud and error were robust and comprehensive. Some £2.2 billion of what were deemed potentially fraudulent bounce back loan applications were blocked through up-front checks—£2.2 billion that the Labour party has not said anything about. Lenders were required to make and maintain appropriate anti-fraud, anti-money laundering and “know your customer” checks. Specifically, they were required to use a reputable fraud bureau to screen against potential and known fraudsters and, if an application failed the lender’s fraud checks, the lender was unable to offer a loan.

There were measures in place: those lender checks, with the duplicate loan check, incorporation date check and change in director check that were put in place in the following months, were the most impactful of all the checks implemented. The minimum standards were agreed following consultation with PwC and lenders on what would have the biggest impact on preventing fraud while still meeting the policy objective of delivering finance quickly.

It is true that PwC originally estimated the extent of fraud relating to bounce back loans at £4.9 billion, but last December it revised that figure down to £3.3 billion—so, as usual, the Labour party has its figures wrong. We will not be taking lectures from a party that, I seem to recall, left a multi-billion-pound black hole in the Defence budget the last time it was in government.

I should just pick up on that point. As the Paymaster General knows, those figures are all still highly uncertain. Around £17 billion—another highly uncertain figure—of the £47 billion of loans may never be paid back. Some of that will be fraud and some because businesses have gone under. However, the key point is that he says checks and balances were put in place. He knows that was not the case: they were dropped for speed. We all lobbied for speed but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) said, it was the Treasury’s responsibility to ensure that the checks were in place. Why were 61% of loans by value out of the door before checks were introduced in June so that people could not apply twice? That is a simple thing, and the door was shut after the horse had bolted.

The hon. Lady has fairly said that she and others on the Opposition side did push for the Government to take action. They are right to accept that—and they were right to do so. This Government did take the precautions and, if we had waited any longer, businesses would have gone under. They would have gone down.

I suggest to the House that the news has been good in other ways too. In 2020, a National Audit Office report contained an estimate that as much as 60% of the sums lent might never be recovered. In fact, nearly 80% of the loans are being repaid or have already been repaid, and we are keeping up the pressure. For instance, we have given the Insolvency Service and Companies House new powers to prevent rogue company directors from escaping liability for their bounce back loans. So far, that has been used in respect of—

On a point of order, Mr Speaker, I am reluctant to make a point of order in a debate, but it is important to reflect on what the Paymaster General has just said and he may wish to correct the impression that he gave. Those loans are 10-year loans, so it cannot be the case that 80% of them have been repaid at this point. He may want to look again at his notes and perhaps correct the impression he gave.

I think that is more a point of clarification than a point of order, but it is now on the record.

It is not worth answering that point, Mr Speaker.

As I said, we have given the Insolvency Service and Companies House new powers to prevent rogue company directors from escaping liability for their bounce back loans. So far, that has been used in respect of almost 62,000 companies holding loans worth £2.1 billion. We are giving the Insolvency Service new powers to disqualify rogue company directors and we have already introduced regulations that allow for greater scrutiny of pre-pack administrations.

Crucially, newspaper reports that the Treasury has written off £4.3 billion in fraudulent covid support payments are simply not true. The £4.3 billion is not a figure produced or recognised by HMRC. As the Chancellor of the Exchequer has said, we are not—I repeat, not—ignoring money relating to fraud in our covid support measures and we are definitely not writing it off. We were and remain determined to crack down on fraud wherever it arises. That is why, for instance, we invested more than £100 million in a taxpayer protection taskforce. At the March Budget last year, we created a taskforce of more than 1,200 HMRC staff to combat fraud in our coronavirus loan schemes. To hear the Opposition, they would deny the existence of those 1,200 staff, who are busy working away to combat fraud. The taskforce is expected to recover up to £1 billion from fraudulent or incorrect payments.

Can my hon. Friend take us back to the points that Lord Agnew made and clarify whether I have it correct? In putting out much-needed money, the Government relied on intermediaries, and therefore much of it went through the banking system. I think I heard Lord Agnew say in the other place that many of the issues related to two banks out of the seven. It looks to me that a lot of the concerns raised by Opposition Members—validly—relate to processes within some of the banks. Can my hon. Friend clarify whether I am right on that, and the Government’s intentions regarding that?

May I suggest that there is plenty of space if the hon. Gentleman wishes to speak? These are becoming speeches, rather than questions. I am more than happy to put him on the list if he wishes. We have plenty of room.

As Mr Speaker says, a more detailed response can be given to my hon. Friend’s question in due course, but he is quite right to focus on the point about banks. More than 75,000 people have been contacted and could face criminal prosecutions and financial penalties. HMRC has already recovered more than £500 million through other robust measures, including: building automated controls into the digital claims process, to prevent more than 100,000 mistaken claims; blocking more than 29,000 claims through pre-payment checks based on risk and intelligence; using cut-off dates around scheme eligibility; and requiring customers to be registered for pay-as-you-earn online and self-assessment. Nor is HMRC’s work done; work to recoup fraudulently obtained funds continues. Those identified face repaying up to double the amount they actually received, plus interest; in more serious cases, they risk criminal prosecution.

The motion also refers to public procurement, another area in which the Government take our responsibility to the taxpayer extremely seriously. In the case of personal protective equipment, our focus was on saving lives and protecting our healthcare workers. That was the top priority, and I make no apologies for that. But again, that did not mean, either then or now, that we were lax in our approach to procurement. We acted swiftly to secure and deliver more than 17.5 billion pieces of PPE to the frontline. The vast majority of the PPE we ordered—in the region of 97%—was suitable for use, either in the NHS or other non-medical settings.

My right hon. Friend the Health Secretary explained in a written statement to the House that the need to procure PPE at incredible speed necessarily involved a change in risk appetite. However, I am also clear that, at all times, the principles set out in “Managing Public Money” continued to apply, even under the pressures at the time. The Health Department took decisions on the basis of sound commercial advice. All transactions were approved by the Cabinet Office and the Department of Health and Social Care clearance board. Treasury Ministers and officials made a calculated judgement that the costs of expediting normal processes were outweighed by the benefits to the health of the country. The health of our healthcare workers came first.

Importantly, as with alleged fraud relating to the covid support schemes, this is not over: the Government will pursue any contracts where there has been a technical failure or breach. I said that approximately 97% were okay, but we are pursuing those that were not, in line with the resolution process referred to in each contract.

On the issue of PPE procurement, which I have raised several times, it is frankly astonishing that the Government could not google “leading PPE equipment suppliers” and come up with the name Arco, which is a world leader in safety and PPE equipment. When it offered its services to the Government, it says that it was cold-shouldered and ignored, and that the Government went straight to those with connections to the Conservative party. It is disgraceful that the Government ignored a high-quality, world-leading company such as Arco.

I think the hon. Lady forgets that, at the time, the whole world was googling for PPE. There was a desperation for PPE. I do not know anything about the company that she mentions, but the reality is that there was a massive desperation to secure PPE for our healthcare workers.

The Government absolutely reserve the right to take legal action against suppliers where that is required, and the Treasury will continue to support the Department of Health and Social Care in doing whatever it needs to protect taxpayer money where there was a breach of contract. The House may also be interested to know that in cases where there is a significant surplus of PPE, we are passing that equipment to schools and public transport workers in this country, or we are donating it to other countries in need, alongside other efforts to sell or repurpose it.

The motion also refers specifically to defence projects. The Ministry of Defence is delivering some of the most complex and technically challenging programmes across Government. There is no doubt that defence acquisition has faced and continues to face some challenges, but we are working hard to address them. The National Audit Office has recognised that we are making progress. For example, in its March 2020 report, it noted that the MOD has reduced delays to delivering programmes over the last 10 years. We are determined to continue to build on that.

The financial settlement awarded to defence at SR20 has been a crucial opportunity for the MOD to move to a sound financial footing, and we are working hard with it to strengthen mechanisms to drive value for money, implement improvements in programme delivery and ensure that it can manage complexity, risk and the pace of technological change in a way that is rigorous and affordable.

This is not just about what we have already done; it is about constantly refining and improving the tools we have at our disposal. That is why we are committed to delivering reforms in the economic crime plan as well as those set out in the upcoming fraud action plan. The combination of last year’s spending review settlement and private sector contributions through the economic crime (anti-money laundering) levy will provide economic crime funding totalling nearly £400 million over the spending review period.

Importantly, the Government counter-fraud function is leading a review into counter-fraud workforce and performance, delivered jointly with the Treasury. The aim of the review is to map the counter-fraud workforce and capability across central Government and selected agencies to identify current resources and how that links to each Department’s ability to prevent, detect and recover fraud and error losses.

To conclude, the purpose of the debate seems to be to try to talk down all that the Government have done on behalf of the taxpayer in the last two years, but I am afraid that the facts paint a different picture. We understand our responsibilities as a Government and will never take them lightly. We will act at all times quickly, effectively and responsibly.

“Lamentable”, “woeful”, “arrogance, indolence and ignorance”—the words of Lord Agnew’s resignation should still be ringing in the Minister’s ears, as should the fact that the disconnect and disinterest in a range of Departments were part of the problem that he outlined. His words should prompt the Government to take action to fix the scandal of taxpayers’ money walking out the door.

In Lord Agnew’s resignation letter, he said:

“As the Minister for Counter Fraud, I have been asked today to publicly defend in Parliament our track record in countering fraud across Government. Unfortunately I am simply not able to do that given the lamentable track record that we have demonstrated since I took up this post nearly two years ago.

It has certainly not been through want of trying, but the Government machine has been almost impregnable to my endless exhortations.”

That is certainly a condemnation of the Government. The Paymaster General has become the Minister for defending the indefensible in the House, as he does yet again today. Perhaps if other Front-Bench Ministers and Conservative Back Benchers took the example of Lord Agnew and his attitude to them, many of them would learn something and resign too.

We are in a cost of living crisis, yet the sums of money that could go to help people now lie in the offshore bank accounts of crooks and fraudsters. Let us not forget that HMRC has stated that the levels of fraud in the covid support schemes are in line with its original planning assumptions. Planning for £4.3 billion-worth of fraud is absolutely breathtaking. The money that was committed in the Budget came far too late because these problems have been known about for years. The bounce back loan scheme, about which Lord Agnew was denied information as a Minister—that should really worry us all—is of course a UK Government-backed scheme, with an estimated £4.9 billion lost to fraud. Just look at the loans paid out to companies that were not trading. Lord Agnew indicated that 26% of losses are estimated to be attributed to fraud rather than to credit failure. This cannot be fobbed off to the banks, because the Treasury asked them to do this and they did it because the loans were Government-backed.

Let us put these figures into some context, because they are massive amounts of money. Scotland’s entire devolved social security system is forecast to cost £4.1 billion in the next financial year. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has calculated that a one-off £500 stimulus cheque for those on universal credit could cost £3 billion. A 5% pay increase for all the NHS staff in England would be £1.7 billion. This is money that could have been much better spent had it not walked out the door and into the hands of fraudsters.

We cannot deny that the money needed to go out the door quickly in the pandemic. I remember, during those early days, hearing on the Treasury Committee from banks and Treasury officials about how concerned they were about the fraud risk. Some of the checks that could have prevented this fraud are simple—a national insurance number or an HMRC reference—but others speak to a long-term systemic failure that the UK Government have been warned about repeatedly—the system of registration at Companies House. That is not an issue of reform, as some have tried to point out; it is an issue of legislation and an opportunity that this Government have missed time and again.

I am looking forward to hearing the hon. Lady’s recommendations on reforming this important area. She mentioned her role on the Treasury Committee. Did she, at the time, have concerns about the use of the British Business Bank for the delivery of loans to businesses?

The British Business Bank being a relatively new mechanism, of course there were concerns about that. We took a lot of evidence on the concerns that existed around loans and other things that were going out the door, but that does not mean that things could not have been put in place to prevent this, and we did hear evidence to that end.

rose—

I have a lot to get through. If the hon. Gentleman wants to make a speech later on, I am sure we will all be incredibly interested to hear what he has to say.

I have spoken at every opportunity, and Ministers have heard me at every opportunity, on the need for reform of Companies House, and it still baffles me why the Government are so lackadaisical about this clear open door to fraud. Companies House remains a repository of information, not a checking service. It is not an anti-money laundering supervisor. In answer to me at Treasury questions earlier, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury referred to the 2018 Financial Action Task Force report, but that still means four years of inactivity in this House. In 2018, as he will remember, we also had the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018, a further missed opportunity to have closed this door and locked the fraudsters out.

Companies House has no connection with the UK Government’s Verify scheme, which is required for a passport, a driving licence or a tax return. For a minimal fee of only £12, someone can set up a company in the UK with no checks on who they are and what they intend to do with that company. Compare this with, for example, the £1,012 for a child to take up their right to citizenship. The money involved is absolutely baffling. Last year, in This is Money, Martin Swain, director of strategy, policy and external communications at Companies House, admitted:

“Even though, sometimes, we know that the information is incorrect or potentially fraudulent, the registrar is legally required to register it.”

The Companies House website even has a disclaimer at the top that says:

“Companies House does not verify the accuracy of the information filed”.

Why is this being allowed to continue? Even a simple drop-down menu in the registration process would stop people putting in things like “Anytown, Anywhere” rather than a place that really exists.

The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech and pointing out all the problems with Companies House. At the moment, as it says, it would take over 10 years, on the pace of change that we have from the Government, to see action taken on this, and all the time people are setting up these fraudulent companies.

The hon. Lady is absolutely correct. The rate at which people are doing that should be causing the Government real fear, and it is not. This makes no sense at all. Every day that the Government allow it to continue, the register becomes more and more useless and more and more full of junk information and fraudulent transactions, and they should be embarrassed by that.

It has been a matter of public record for years that the Companies House register is utter guff. It contains names such as “Holy Jesus Christ”, whose nationality is listed as “angelic”, residence as “heaven” and profession as “creator”, and “Adolf Tooth Fairy Hitler”, listed as one of the clearly invented directors of a company calling itself Spypriest Ltd. There are also some highly precocious company directors who are only a few months old. Research by Global Witness in 2018 identified 4,000 listed beneficial owners under the age of two, including one who had yet to be born—talk about being born yesterday!— as well as five beneficial owners who controlled more than 6,000 companies. This is just not credible, and the Government know it.

During the past week, the Companies House expert Graham Barrow has been monitoring in real time the construction of a network of companies using real names but fictitious addresses. This leaves real people affected, but often unaware that their names are being abused—and difficult to contact, because the addresses are not real. It also affects the counter-fraud efforts to which the Minister referred. The people setting up those fake companies cannot be traced and chased down, and are allowed to get away with it.

It gets worse, however, because this open door at Companies House allows dirty money to be laundered through the UK. Oliver Bullough is one of many who have pointed out that kleptocrats from around the world have been abusing UK corporate structures—including Scottish limited partnerships—for years to shift their ill-gotten lucre. There are pressing implications for the current situation in Ukraine, but this is not new; it has been going on for years, completely unimpeded. The news that the National Crime Agency has today been able to seize £5.6 million from an Azerbaijani MP based in London is of course welcome, but that is short of the £15 million that the NCA wanted to seize. It is the tip of a massive iceberg. Duncan Hames of Transparency International has said that it estimates that the ruling elite of Azerbaijan own £700 million worth of property in the UK, and that about £2 billion has been shifted around Europe, some of it through our corporate structures. That makes the delaying of a registration of overseas entities Bill even more unacceptable, and even more baffling.

Does the hon. Lady agree that while the arrangements relating to foreign entities do need to be a tightened, a culture change is also needed? She will be aware from press reports that the Foreign Secretary dined out at a Tory donor’s restaurant and charged that to the taxpayer although civil servants had said that the restaurant was too expensive. Does she agree that the Foreign Secretary should have to pay the money back?

I agree that there needs to be probity when it comes to that kind of money and that kind of behaviour—particularly the overruling of civil servants, if that has indeed been the case.

When I raised some of these matters in the House last week, Ministers pointed to unexplained wealth orders as a great badge of success, so I tabled a parliamentary question to find out how successful they had been. In 2018, the year in which they were introduced, there were three. In 2019, there were six. I thought, “That is great—the numbers are going up”, but there have been none since then. Is this a measure that is actually effective in tackling unexplained wealth? I am not sure that it is.

My hon. Friend will recall that the first ever unexplained wealth order was awarded against someone who was only allowed to become a United Kingdom citizen because of the billions of pounds that she had promised to bring into the United Kingdom. Does my hon. Friend believe that that is an indication that Government policy is fighting against itself? On the one hand the Government want to get people with lots of money into the UK, and on the other hand they do not ask too many questions about where that money has come from.

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct to draw attention to that. It is one of many deficiencies in the Home Office systems as well. It seems that those with money are given a free pass, whereas those who come here with more humble undertakings to begin their lives here, to work and to build a family, end up being penalised and having to pay an awful lot more in fees, and experiencing all the challenges that that brings.

Hon. Members may think that some of these issues with Companies House seem a bit remote from the real world and the real lives of our constituents, but that could not be further from the truth. During lockdown, a company in Glasgow using myriad company structures made claims under the furlough scheme, but employees of that company never received the money that they were entitled to. Even if the company directors ended up being prosecuted, or HMRC ended up getting its money back, those employees would still get nothing. That shows the complete unfairness in the system. I would be interested to know whether the Government have any figures, from when they have chased down these companies, on how many employees never saw the money that they should have got and that they needed to get by.

For those completely excluded from the covid support schemes, this is all the more galling. Limited company directors and pay-as-you-earn taxpayers were left out because they were deemed too much of a fraud risk, and new mothers who had taken time off to have a child in the preceding three years lost out because calculating their maternity leave was thought to be too complex. Yet as they were being told that by Ministers, the real fraudsters were raking it in, with drugs gangs getting payouts, and many of the people who benefited will never be caught.

These most recent examples of the Government’s relaxed attitude to the wasting of public funds are by no means the only cases. Best for Britain’s “scandalous spending tracker” sets out the following examples—I will list just some of them; otherwise, we could be here all afternoon, and I am sure that others want to speak—since the current inhabitant of No. 10 Downing Street came to office. It categorises them in three ways: as “crony contracts”, “duff deals” and “outrageous outgoings”.

Here are a few highlights: £11 million on blue passports; over half a million on chauffeuring Government documents, never mind Government Ministers; £56 million contracting to big consulting firms outside tendering processes; £29 million on the festival of Brexit; £900,000 painting a plane; £900,000 researching a bridge to Ireland, which I could have saved the Government money on, because I did a second-year geography project—at high school, not university—that could have told them it was a ropey idea; £32 million on unusable PPE suits; over £38 million on a test and trace contract that was not fulfilled; £10 billion on a failed test and trace system; over £300 million on expired PPE, and billions more on contracts for friends and family of Ministers and Conservative party donors through the fast-track lane.

All that totalled £25 billion, and all of it at a time when the screw was being tightened on those who have the least, with cuts to universal credit, some getting no money at all, and more effort spent chasing down those who happened to wrongly claim child benefit than those who deliberately defrauded the public purse to the tune of billions.

I find it difficult to understand why the Government are so careless with our money and why they do not want to act on fraud and money laundering. The question “who benefits?” continues to rattle around in my head. While those on the Government Benches do not like the inference that it was them and their chums, I wonder whether the fact that this coincides with the undermining of the Electoral Commission and the relaxing of the rules on overseas donors is any kind of accident. It is not just me; the Centre for American Progress flagged recently:

“Uprooting Kremlin-linked oligarchs will be a challenge given the close ties between Russian money and the United Kingdom’s ruling conservative party, the press, and its real estate and financial industry.”

This should worry us all, but it does not seem to worry those on the Government Benches.

Lord Agnew’s estimate of the total fraud loss across UK Government Departments is £29 billion per year. That could go, as he suggested, to tax cuts or, as we on the SNP Benches would argue for, to investment in public services and increases in social security. Either way, there is a cost to this fraud, and it remains absolutely baffling that this UK Government have continued to let it go on their watch.

Will the hon. Lady give way?

I am just coming to a close, but I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will have a contribution to make later.

The solution is not difficult if the will is there. We have lost too much time and too many opportunities to bring forward measures in different Bills. If we are to have an economic crime plan, it must tackle all these issues; we must not miss another opportunity. If the Government will not act, they should devolve full powers in this area to the Scottish Parliament and let our colleagues in Edinburgh get on with the job. Scotland has no desire to be tarnished yet further by this grubby excuse for a Government.

I am slightly surprised to be called so early in the debate, but very grateful. It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), who spoke a lot of sense about Companies House in particular. I welcome the Opposition’s use of their time on this debate, as this is an important matter that goes to the heart of competence in what the Government are supposed to deliver: good decision making while acting prudently with the public purse. Let us be clear that fraud and waste of public funds are entirely unacceptable.

Before I continue, I should point to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. For 10 years, before becoming an MP, I worked in fraud and financial crime, and the organisation I worked for chaired the Joint Fraud Taskforce. I should perhaps also start with an apology. I have heard the phrase “single transferrable speech” a few times in this place, and this might be my opportunity to make one. My hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) and the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) secured a debate on economic crime, and I will repeat some of the points I made in that debate, if the House will indulge me.

We would be right to be dismayed by some of the unrecovered sums from the various covid support measures, but we should not be quite so quick to jump down the Government’s throat. The recovery of such moneys, as the Minister said, takes time, and we must be realistic that the headline figure will look very different in six months’ time, let alone 12 months’ time. Having spoken to Ministers about this, I am reassured by their determination to drive down those figures further and further, and by the measures that they have already taken, but this is another reminder that we should be considering an economic crime Bill as a matter of urgency.

Here is where the single transferrable speech kicks in. I met the National Crime Agency a few years ago, and it had mapped an organised crime group and followed how it laundered the proceeds of economic crime, picking up money along the way from our constituents who had been defrauded, from people running small boats across the seas, from organised crime and from the dark web. The chain runs from telephone fraud across the channel and to the poppy fields of Afghanistan, and these groups are not rag-tag bunches of criminals; they are organised, they are not chancing their arm and they are deeply successful. They are not paying tax, and there are many of them out there.

As sure as eggs is eggs, some of the people who have been exploiting these Government schemes are connected to organised crime. They know how to manipulate the system, and they know how to avoid all the very good, robust checks that the Government mandated for the covid schemes. One of the things we need to do is tighten up the system and, again, there should be an economic crime Bill.