Economic Outlook and Furlough Scheme Changes

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Tuesday 16th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

Nothing could silence the hon. Gentleman’s voice; I am glad to have been able to hear his question. I would be very happy to talk to him. I suspect that there are several hundred miles between us, but I will make sure that we find some way to talk to each other.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Minister on getting through the entire UQ without making a single commitment, although he has made many observations. As a member of the Treasury Committee, I look forward to the Government’s formal response to our report on the 1 million people who are currently missing out on the Government’s schemes. Will he see if he can at least make a commitment before today’s UQ ends? What is he doing as a Treasury Minister to ensure that, as we move from the acute stage of the pandemic to furlough schemes beginning to end, the furlough scheme is not remembered as a waiting room for unemployment rather than the job saving scheme that it should have been?

[Jesse Norman]

The hon. Lady will recall that the topic of the UQ is the job retention scheme and the self-employment scheme, and their relation to the UK economy in the face of covid, and that is what I have focused on. Of course, as a former member of the Treasury Committee myself for five years, I will take its report very seriously, as she suggests. In many ways, it may well be that people will look back on the job retention scheme and conclude, as the shadow Chancellor has, not only that it was considerably better than any possible alternative or inaction, but that it saved an enormous number of jobs.