Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme

Chris Stephens Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

I believe I have eight minutes to speak, and I will do my best to keep to it. These are important debates, and I have some sympathy with your view, Mr Deputy Speaker, about seeing whether we can merge them.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) for leading the debate with a fantastic and robust speech. The key point she made was about the costs versus the savings of the job retention scheme, with the social cost of ending it too early being that millions of jobs will be affected, including in the aviation sector.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) made the important point that we are in deep and dangerous waters, and we could extend the furlough scheme for eight months, rather than end it on an arbitrary date. I certainly support his view that tax offices should be kept open. He made the case well for Cumbernauld, and I have opposed HMRC office closures across the United Kingdom. Perhaps the Treasury could take a leaf out of the Department for Work and Pensions’ book. Two years ago, half the jobcentres in Glasgow were closed, and the Department for Work and Pensions is now having to reopen them as a result of the demand that it believes will be placed on them. It is also having to look at opening jobcentres in other areas where it closed them two years ago.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran referred to the bewildering vote in Holyrood last night, but I have to say, it was not as bewildering as the statements we heard from a number of Conservative colleagues that the job retention scheme was somehow a key feature of Conservative economic theory. That was not the case in March, when such a scheme had not yet been put in place by the UK, and when Opposition parties were raising examples of schemes put in place by other countries to support workers. It was that pressure, I would suggest, from all Opposition parties and Opposition Members asking the Government to look at international examples and put in place a scheme to protect workers that was the reason for the job retention scheme.

The hon. Members for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) and for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) made an important point about local lockdowns. If, for reasons of public health, there must be a local lockdown in an area of the United Kingdom and the job retention scheme no longer exists, what support will be made available? Are we really suggesting that people and businesses should make a choice whether to follow the public health guidance or to challenge and ignore it because they are not getting support? That is a dangerous path to go down and a reason why we should consider extending the scheme. No one should have to make that choice. There were optimistic forecasts in March that this would be a three or four-month event, and then things would suddenly get back to normal, but that is not the case, and I think the optimistic forecasts about what happens next will also not take place.

I echo the remarks of the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts), who rightly said that people will have to make choices, and some of those choices are unacceptable if the job retention scheme is not extended. I also echo the remarks of the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain). The pressure on the constituency office teams of every Member since March has been considerable. Whether you have been a Member for decades or came in the door in December, we can all agree that this is the busiest that any constituency office team has been. Part of the reason is having to address inquiries from constituents about the nuts and bolts of the job retention scheme. For example, some people who were new starts in March were missing out, and we had to pressure the Government to make those sorts of changes.

As has been said, extending the furlough scheme by eight months would save 61,000 jobs. In August, in Scotland, 34.4% of staff in the accommodation and food services were still on furlough; in the arts, entertainment and recreation sector, it was 57.5%. These are key sectors of the economy and are viable jobs going forward. Sectors such as the arts, entertainment and recreation, for example, are key parts of the economy that take on young workers and people not interested in working in a conventional workplace—say, an office or factory—and are key to going forward and a key part of the rebuild and of putting young people into work.

We can no longer have vague promises of creative solutions. As several Members have said, according to some estimates, unemployment could be greater than in the great depression of the 1930s. According to some assumptions, there could be 4.5 million people unemployed—even higher than the unemployment in the 1930s. We are seeing an explosion of redundancies, while the Government are saying they will do whatever it takes, but the point has been well made: it has not stopped Centrica, British Airways and other employers who wish to fire and rehire. I hope the Government will look very sympathetically at the private Member’s Bill put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands), because that practice really needs to end.

We are in a serious situation now, given the number of employers who have announced job losses: Rolls-Royce, 9,000; Jaguar Land Rover, 1,100; John Lewis, 1,300; Boots, 4,000; Marks and Spencer, 950; Alexander Dennis, a bus company in Falkirk, 650; Costa, 1,650. These will all have serious economic impacts, and we need to do everything we can to ensure that those jobs are saved. I hope the Government do accept the demands of the Treasury Select Committee that they look carefully at extending the job retention scheme. I hope they will do that.

In closing, not one Member has said that the job retention scheme should go on forever, but extending it by eight months is a sensible proposition, and as others have said, we need to look at what other countries are doing and match that.