More than half of all company directors struck off in Britain in the past 15 months were involved in alleged fraud or abuse of Covid-19 financial support schemes, official figures have revealed.

There were 1,200 directors disqualified between 1 April last year and 30 June this year, with 611 of the cases involving abuse of Covid-19 schemes, mainly in relation to taxpayer-backed bounce-back loans. About £1.1bn of loans have already been flagged as suspected fraud or error.