Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what plans his Department has to help support the British Business Bank strengthen its approach to countering fraud.

The Department already supports the British Business Bank (BBB) in its counter fraud activities and will continue to do so.

We work in partnership with BBB to support their compliance with the Government Functional Standards in Counter Fraud including the:-

• Detection and Measurement of fraud,
• Fraud Risk Assessments,
• Measurement of fraud controls,
• Investigation of fraud and
• High level fraud analysis.

Further, we are working to strengthen the future approach to fraud. The department is currently working with BBB on an updated fraud strategy to address the challenges associated with the Bounce Back Loan and which for instance includes:-

• Improved Management Information
• Enhanced enforcement action
• How insight from current schemes can be used to prevent fraud in future schemes administered by BBB on behalf of BEIS.