Provision of Covid support for businesses:
The APPG made an important and ground-breaking contribution to the design and roll-out of the unprecedented government-backed lending that was critical to the survival of thousands of UK businesses brought to a standstill by the Covid pandemic.
In a novel and fast-moving situation, and in the absence of any established alternative mechanism, the APPG acted as a convener for regular meetings between decision-makers in the relevant government departments, the British Business Bank, and other interested stakeholders, including business and trade representatives. While facilitating a rapid decision-making process we helped to unblock issues that could have stood in the way of rapid implementation.
The APPG also played an instrumental role in the introduction of the Bounce Back Loan (BBL). In the face of policymakers’ insistence that there was insufficient evidence of demand for support below a £50,000 threshold, and the prevailing view that the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan (CBIL) would therefore be adequate to meet the needs of most impacted businesses, we helped to persuade decisionmakers of the urgent need for an easily accessible alternative to the CBIL for smaller SMEs.
The role of the APPG in compensation for victims of the HBOS Reading fraud:
On the day that the verdicts were handed down in the trial of the HBOS Reading fraudsters, the APPG’s chair, George Kerevan, and director of policy, Heather Buchanan of Athena, met with Lloyds Banking Group (LBG). From the outset the Bank attempted to present HBOS Reading as a legacy problem for which they had no responsibility.
Over the following days, weeks and years, through changes of APPG Chair and government, working with victims, their representatives and the SME Alliance, the Athena Foundation has ensured that the issue of compensation for victims remained on the agenda and that the failure of the original review scheme for customers affected by the fraud, the “Griggs Review”, was brought to light. We were major contributors to the Cranston Review which found “both in structure and in implementation, [the process for providing direct and consequential loss to victims] was neither fair nor reasonable”.
A key stakeholder in the re-review process based on Cranston’s recommendations, the APPG attempted to work constructively with the Foskett Panel and the other stakeholders, SME Alliance and LBG, to speed up the delivery of redress to affected victims. This led to the introduction of the £3million fixed sum award as a pragmatic alternative to customers preparing a detailed claim, following which there was a dramatic upturn in the number of customers receiving compensation. However, the APPG has also been robust in its criticism of the Panel’s approach and apparent lack of urgency where it considers victims are being failed and continues to hold it to account while victims remain uncompensated.