Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 8
8
Acknowledged
Notwithstanding the lack of preparedness, it is clear that staff at HM Treasury, the Department,...
Conclusion
Notwithstanding the lack of preparedness, it is clear that staff at HM Treasury, the Department, and the Bank pulled out all the stops to get the Scheme up and running as quickly as possible; we should not underestimate the level of commitment they have shown in the response to the pandemic. The Scheme launched within two weeks of HM Treasury proposing it to the Department and the Bank. Once the Scheme was launched, lenders approved 268,000 loans to businesses totalling £8.4 billion in the first week of operations.20
Government response summary AI-generated
The government acknowledges the Bank's essential role in driving economic growth and affirms that ministers acted quickly to implement the scheme in response to the pandemic's economic consequences.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government · verbatim extract
Acknowledged
The British Business Bank (the Bank) works to drive economic growth by making finance markets work better for smaller businesses – wherever they are in the UK and wherever they are on their business journey – enabling them to prosper and grow. As such, the Bank plays an essential role in the context of government’s wider support to business, with access to finance being one of the factors in business success. The Bank collaborates with other bodies engaged in business support, including the Devolved Administrations, Local Enterprise Partnerships and Growth Hubs. The government works closely with the Bank to ensure that our access to finance policy reflects the changing needs of UK business and as part of this we keep the Bank’s mission under review. Given the gravity of the economic consequences brought about by the coronavirus pandemic, ministers decided to act quickly to put in place government support to help small businesses access the finance they needed. In this case, decisions were necessarily taken in the absence of robust analysis since the rapidly evolving situation meant that there was limited data available. The Bank responded at speed to implement the Bounce Back Loans Scheme (the Scheme), on the instruction of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (the department).
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