An ex-minister who resigned at the dispatch box over the government’s “cack-handed” failure in its approach to Covid-19 business loans has said the scheme may be costing taxpayers “hundreds of millions of pounds a month.”
Lord Agnew of Oulton, Boris Johnson’s former anti-fraud minister, told The Times that ahead of his speech, “I was nearly sick going into the chamber”.
“This isn’t natural for me, I took no pleasure from it but the failure of Government to tackle fraud felt so egregious, and the need for remedy so urgent, that I felt my only option left was to smash some crockery to get people to take notice,” he added.
“In life one should try to stay inside the tent to win the arguments but ultimately there comes a breaking point.”
Meanwhile, analysis by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has found the sub-lineage of the Omicron variant of coronavirus is able to spread faster than the original.
The UKHSA said BA.2 – a strain first detected in December – had a comparatively higher growth rate in all observed areas of England, meaning cases were increasing faster than they were for BA.1, known commonly as the Omicron variant.
