Daily: Follow the Money - How COVID loan fraud spiralled

The Bunker

Podmasters

News, Politics, Society & Culture, Government

4.6 • 984 Ratings

🗓️ 30 January 2022

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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.” https://www.patreon.com/bunkercast 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	My name is Stan. I'm at. Nice to meet you. So you took up photography where? I've always loved
0:05.5	photography but I turn it into earning a living at 60. I enrolled on a day course.
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1:00.0	Hello and welcome to the bunker daily I am your host Alex Andrea.
1:08.0	A little known minister responsible for tackling fraud Lord Agnew resigned last week in the Lords,
1:15.2	when asked to defend this government's record on the large scale defrauding of
1:19.5	COVID financial aid schemes. The assertion made that the priority was speed of
1:26.0	distribution of funds, he explained, is absolutely correct, but what has
1:31.2	followed has been nothing less than desperately inadequate.
1:36.4	Total fraud across government is estimated at $29 billion a year, a combination of arrogance,
1:43.7	arrogance, indolence and ignorance,
1:46.1	freezes the government machine.
	...

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