A JURY has been told that the Government had a "secret agreement" to pull funding from a Bradford food business it had previously promised to help expand.

Gul-Nawaz Khan Akbar, the "driving force" behind the successful Mumtaz food firm, is on trial accused of fraudulently attempting to claim a £100,000 business grant to help build a £5 million factory in Legrams Lane.

A £100,000 loan had been promised by Yorkshire Forward and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to build the factory, but Dr Akbar had to provide paperwork to show a total of £1.1 million in capital had been invested in the project by December 2011 for that loan to go ahead, the jury has been told.

Akbar has admitted handing in "dummy invoices" when he was unable to do this before the deadline, but claims he did so not to fraudulently claim the money but to buy a few extra months to work on the project, which had been beset by problems including planning issues and Japanese Knotweed on the land.

His defence barrister Philip Hackett told the jury at Bradford Crown Court today that although this act had been dishonest, it had not been fraud.

He said the only way Akbar would have got the grant would have been once the building was finished, not by just submitting false documents.

He said it was "unreasonable" that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills had refused to extend his deadline for the documentation, and this led him to submit the false reports to salvage the development.

Mr Hackett told the jury that unbeknown to Akbar, the Government had urged the department to pull the funding for the project, and was looking for an excuse to do so.

"Mr Akbar was working to deliver the project, but what he didn't know was he was banging his head against a brick wall," Mr Hackett said.

"He didn't know that central Government were wanting to pull this funding. This project was no longer 'big enough' for central Government. They didn't want to give these sorts of grants any more. BIS was under instructions to get out of this grant if it could.

"Dr Akbar didn't know that he was putting over a million into a project that there had been this secret agreement over. He did not realise that all his work would be wasted if he did not observe the exact letter of the law.

"When he submitted these dummy reports he was trying to save the project, not get money for himself.

"For him, confessing that he was entirely responsible for the false reports was an embarrassing and uncomfortable thing to do.

"Getting a few more months is not a criminal offence, even if you did it by deception. It may be something you disapprove of, but not a crime."

The jury is due to retire tomorrow to start its deliberations.

The trial continues.