Chris Elmore
Main Page: Chris Elmore (Labour - Bridgend)Department Debates - View all Chris Elmore's debates with the Cabinet Office
(4 years, 2 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right that we want to do everything we can to enable loved ones to be visited in care homes. It is an exceptionally difficult dilemma, but we think repeated testing offers the way forward.
Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)
The Prime Minister could possibly be a bit confused. In his answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), he said that the furlough scheme is available “throughout the UK”. On 16 October, the Welsh First Minister asked the Chancellor to extend the furlough scheme from 67% of pay to 80%. On 19 October, the Chancellor told the First Minister that that could not be done for “technical reasons”. What are those technical reasons? Or is this more about the fact that when it suits the Prime Minister, furlough applies to the whole UK, and when it does not suit him for party political reasons, it does not?
The Prime Minister
We are going back into measures across England that are necessary to drive the R down. They differ from the measures currently obtaining in Scotland, but in so far as people across this country need furlough, in Wales or elsewhere, they have access to furlough. It is a UK-wide system.