£4.3bn stolen from taxpayers is the real Covid scandal

BORIS'S lockdown birthday cake might have spawned more headlines but the truly shocking story this week is the resignation of Lord Agnew over the colossal loss of taxpayers' money to fraudsters during the Government's "Bounce Back" loan scheme.

- Tim Newark

Some £4.3billion has been lost to false claims, with some of that being paid to thousand companies that weren't even trading. A total of £29billion is being lost every year by the Government through fraud, enough to take a penny off income tax.

With a cost of living crisis upon us, rocketing energy prices and inflation-hit shopping bills, we all need to take care of every pound we spend and the Government should be doing the same. Instead they seem to take a very lax approach to our hard-earned cash.

Treasury minister Lord Agnew did not hold back on his criticism of the Government's failure to ensure greater care of taxpayers' money. "A combination of arrogance, indolence and ignorance freezes the government machine," he said. Before resigning, he claimed it is “my deeply held conviction that the current state of affairs is not acceptable.” As the minister charged with counter-fraud, he hoped his departure will focus attention on the scandalous public misuse of our money.