Loan charge group flags up 14 of Stride’s ‘untruths’

A catalogue of ‘untruths’ spoken at the time by a Treasury minister about the Loan Charge 2019 have been compiled and sent to MPs who were on the receiving end of them.

The Loan Charge Action Group has taken issue with numerous answers given to the Commons by Mel Stride MP last week, in reply to 11 MPs who asked him about the charge.

The Treasury’s-then-financial secretary issued “partial and misleading answers and, in some cases, said things that are not true,” LCAG tells the MPs in an open letter.

Speaking yesterday to ContractorUK, the group said it was more important to correct the record than receive a reply from the MPs, who include Jo Johnson, the brother of Tory leadership frontrunner Boris Johnson.

It is not the first time that the lobbyist-turned support group for loan charge contractors has intervened to flag up inaccuracies in Mr Stride’s statements to his fellow MPs.

For example, LCAG previously wrote a letter to Labour MP Rupa Huq in light of another of Mr Stride’s appearances at Treasury Questions, where it says his answer was “misleading”.

But now LCAG says that, far from just a single answer, the-then Treasury minister gave some 14 incorrect statements, which are part of an official  “campaign of disinformation”.

“It’s bringing the Treasury and HMRC into disrepute,” the group also alleged, having outlined the 14 in the letter to the MPs.

“Thank you again for asking these questions, challenging the Treasury and standing up for constituents facing the draconian Loan Charge.”