First Report - Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy Annual Report and Accounts 2020–21
Select Committee
Public Accounts Committee
HC 59
18 May 2022
Recommendations
2 results
3
Accepted
The Department does not know whether grants distributed by local authorities on its behalf have...
Recommendation
The Department does not know whether grants distributed by local authorities on its behalf have benefited businesses, including those most in need of that funding. Although the Department set the eligibility criteria for grant schemes administered by local authorities, it …
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Government Response Summary
The government agrees with the recommendation and states that lessons learned from delivering the initial COVID-19 support grants is that greater assurance can be obtained through mandating pre-payment eligibility checks by local authorities, improved assurance sampling design, innovative data collection and management, as well as independent evaluation.
HM Treasury
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6
Accepted
The Post Office’s mismanagement of its Horizon programme has had devastating consequences for individuals wrongly...
Recommendation
The Post Office’s mismanagement of its Horizon programme has had devastating consequences for individuals wrongly accused of fraud. The financial cost of compensating these individuals will largely fall to the public purse. The Horizon accounting system erroneously recorded shortfalls of …
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Government Response Summary
The government agrees and has provided over £2.5 billion in funding over the past decade, and is providing a further £335 million over the next three years, and will share letters with the Committee from BEIS to Post Office, providing assurances for the Historical Shortfall Scheme, interim and full payments for those with overturned criminal convictions. Further letters will be shared with the Committee at the earliest opportunity.
HM Treasury
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Conclusions (4) Observations and findings — click to expand
4
Conclusion
Accepted
The Department was aware of heightened fraud risks within its COVID-19 business support schemes from the outset but did not make full use of all the tools at its disposal to prevent and detect fraud. The Department expected that some potential recipients of funding for its COVID-19 business support schemes …
Government Response Summary
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation and states that the exchange of letters for schemes implemented under Ministerial Direction have since been published on GOV.UK, and that external advice was received ahead of the Bounce Back Loan Scheme’s launch on measures to try to mitigate fraud.
11
Conclusion
Accepted
Although the Department set eligibility criteria for grant schemes administered by local authorities, it delegated most grant decisions to them. The Department told us that it provided clear guidance to local authorities on recordkeeping requirements and the need to be able to reconcile payments for the purposes of audit.43 However, …
Government Response Summary
Responsibility for checking that all grant awards were issued in a compliant manner and to eligible businesses rests with the local authority. It is a condition of BEIS grants to local authorities that they must take all reasonable and practicable steps to recover any payment made in fraud or error before BEIS becomes liable.
16
Conclusion
Accepted
As some COVID-19 business support schemes have increasingly become part of business as usual, the Department told us that, for example in relation to grants distributed by local authorities, its systems and methods are now approaching maturity. It considers it has improved its guidance to local authorities and refined its …
Government Response Summary
The government agrees with the recommendation to establish a standard framework for assuring grants delivered through local authorities, with a target implementation date of December 2022.
19
Conclusion
Accepted
In December 2020 the Department wrote to the Post Office, noting that the number of applications to the Scheme was ‘…materially higher than expected resulting in a corresponding increase in possible scheme claims and costs…’ and that the Post Office considered ‘…any amount in excess of the original budget will …
Government Response Summary
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation and states it has provided over £2.5 billion in funding to support the Post Office network over the past decade, and is providing a further £335 million over the next three years.