Baroness Drake

Protecting the health and safety of the public is, and must always be, our top priority. The UK Government is working with the Devolved Administrations and local government to keep the whole of the UK safe. For example, back to work guidance documents have been developed in consultation with approximately 250 businesses, unions, industry leaders as well as the Devolved Administrations.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is working with local resilience forums to coordinate the response of local public?services, and?provide?support to the most vulnerable in our communities. The department has published guidance here for local councils during the coronavirus outbreak:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-guidance-for-local-government

It is vital that Parliament can continue to scrutinise the Government and legislate to support the coronavirus response.

Local authorities have a general duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in need living within their areas. This can include support for kinship care families who look after vulnerable children. Councils across England are getting an additional £3.2 billion to help them to deal with the immediate impacts of coronavirus, including to support vulnerable children.

Kinship families whose children left care through special guardianship orders are eligible for therapeutic support through the recently announced Adoption Support Fund COVID-19 scheme. The scheme will pay for different types of therapeutic support for families whose children have experienced trauma or abuse in their early life and as a result be made more anxious during the current coronavirus crisis.

We are working with sector organisations such as the Family Rights Group and Grandparents Plus who represent kinship carers to understand the challenges and identify opportunities to increase the support available to them.

We know that many social care providers are working together and with local government and health services to support each other with workforce shortages. We will further facilitate this mutual aid by shortly publishing guidance about the redeployment of staff and the use of volunteers. We are developing our data collection to provide information on workforce pressures across England, ensuring that resources can be targeted where they are most needed. Additionally, on 23 April we launched a new national recruitment campaign which aims to attract 20,000 people into social care over the next three months. To enable quick recruitment, we are temporarily providing free-of-charge Disclosure and Barring Service applications and fast-track Barred List checks for many of our vital social care roles. We are also working with NHS England to ensure that nurses returning to practice are deployed where they are most needed.

As the economy re-opens, we are looking at how to adjust our support in a way that ensures people can get back to work, protecting both the UK economy and the livelihoods of the British people.

On the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, the Chancellor has been clear that getting people back to work will be introduced in a measured way, avoiding a cliff edge. The scheme will run in full until July. We will then introduce more flexibility so that we move out of the scheme in a measured way that protects people’s incomes and helps support furloughed employees as they return to work. This will run for three months from August through to the end of October.

The Government will continue to monitor developments to understand the impacts of COVID-19 on individuals and businesses.

Applications for the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) opened on Monday 20^th April. As of Thursday 23^rd April HMRC had received about 512,000 claims with a total value of about £4.5bn.

This is a new scheme and HMRC are currently working through the analysis they will be able to provide based on the data available. HMRC will make the timescales for publication and the types of data available in due course.

Applications for the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) opened on Monday 20^th April. As of midnight Sunday 3 May 800,000 employers had furloughed a total of 6.3m jobs, with a total value claimed of around £8bn.

This is a new scheme and HMRC are currently working through the analysis they will be able to provide based on the data available. HMRC will make the timescales for publication and the types of data available in due course.