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

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the remarks by Lord Agnew of Oulton on 24 January (HL Deb, col 21) where he stated that "three out of the seven main lenders account for 87 per cent of loans paid out to companies already dissolved", why the ratio is so skewed; and following his further remarks that "two of the seven account for 81 per cent of cases where loans were paid out to companies incorporated post-Covid", whether they will provide (1) names of the two lenders, (2) the (a) number, and (b) names, of the recipient companies incorporated after the start of the pandemic measures, and (3) the amounts of loans made to each of the companies.

The Bank continues to work with lenders in order to better understand and validate what may be driving these differences, and to share best practice, data and insight.

The Bank continues to publish the names of companies who took out loans under the scheme where required in line with reporting transparency requirements. We do not intend to name specific lenders at this time due to the commercially sensitive nature of this information.