ROBERT BRUCE

Does anyone really care?

tone from the top. So it comes as no surprise to find that after the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s remark of ‘f*** business’, no ministers sought to take business issues seriously again. If the boss doesn’t take something seriously, no one else will. A shambles will ensue.

So it was no surprise to find in the latest report from the Public Accounts Committee that the now-being-disbanded business ministry waved through billions of pounds of loans and never bothered seriously trying to get them back. Or, as the committee put it, the department was showing “no real signs of making the improvements that would prevent the big mistakes it has made over many years, especially during the pandemic, happening all over again” So not only has the cash gone but nobody cares too much that it has.

Meanwhile, the committee found that Companies House had more or less gone AWOL while evidence of false identities and rampant fraud slid by. Since 2009 it has been a criminal offence to make a false declaration to Companies House. Yet there has only been one prosecution in the 14 years or so since. And that was when someone stuck down the name of Vince Cable, Lib Dem leader at the time, as a director to show how easy it was to register false details. F*** business, indeed.

Robert Bruce is an award-winnin g writer on accountan cy for The Times