Crowdcube's Luke Lang gives 'evidence' at HoC Treasury Committee.

First point is what the hell are Crowdcube doing at this committee giving MPs advice and secondly Lang is guilty of a blatant untruth in his response to Alister Jack MP. We really are living in a fantasy world.

Lang is asked a few very pertinent questions by Alister Jack MP at around 11.36am - why do things always go wrong at 11.36am? It turns out that Alister has invested in a company on CC - the outcome is not revealed but maybe the line of questioning is a clue.

Just as a note here, Alister Jack is himself a highly successful entrepreneur, having co founded an Edinburgh based marquee company back in the late 80's which grew to be very large marquee company - Field and Lawn. So he has some form when it comes to talking about successful start ups and how best to help them. I know all of this from first hand experience as we were both cutting our teeth at the same time in Edinburgh as entrepreneurs. You can tell he was rather better at it than I. 

He starts by asking Lang about the degree to which Crowdcube is liable for the information it produces on the platform. Lang says that they carry out extensive checks and get the companies to sign off all their pitch claims. Well that's not completely true as we know but it's passable. Then Jack asks about a company that had funded on the platform and went bust and it was proved information in the pitch was not correct or missing; who would be liable. 

Lang responds with a total untruth. He says that to the best of his knowledge this has never happened.

Luke you do remember Solar Cloth Co? Surely. It was on here and we helped the Times write it up - it was well covered and you were asked questions about it at the time. Investors were most definitely not given the right information about the founder and his previous businesses. They were in fact misled. Ethos Global is another one. Ovivo was another where the information was not too good. There are several others that have gone bust where claims made on the pitch were dubious at best. Tip of the iceberg.

Crowdcube took no responsibility and investors lost it all.

Of course Lang was only at the HoC as an 'adviser'; he was not under oath. Which in itself is total joke. It would be like asking Fred Goodwin to advise on banking reform. Or Tony Blair to advise on Intelligence Reports. 

Where is the counter balance?

Vested interests, as always, win the day - it is no way to run a country.