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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment his Department has made of the number of companies that claimed loans under the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme without ever publishing company results before the pandemic.

The Department does not hold this data. In order to be eligible for a Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan, a business had to have a borrowing proposal which the lender would consider viable, were it not for the pandemic.