Oral Answers to Questions

Claire Coutinho Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend’s great work as a trade envoy is known throughout the House. Some commercial routes are still available, we are keeping the international travel advice under constant review, and we are still, on a daily basis, organising charter flights to bring the remaining overseas British nationals home. I think there are around 20,000 still to repatriate.

[Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con)]

What steps the Government are taking to support aviation sector workers during the covid-19 lockdown.

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Grant Shapps)]

We are speaking regularly to companies across the aviation sector to encourage them to draw on the Government’s various different packages of cross-economy financial support.

[Claire Coutinho]

With Gatwick on my doorstep, a lot of my constituents work in the aviation sector. Will the Secretary of State outline what support he is giving to airlines to make sure that they are employing people and continuing employment where they can? What support will he give to aviation workers who will need to transition into other forms of employment?

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: we are making available a huge amount of support, including things such as the coronavirus large-business scheme—in other words, the coronavirus job-retention furloughing scheme—and various other business-interruption schemes, but it is true to say that airlines and the aviation sector in general are facing a particularly hard time. They were first into this crisis and we think there will be quite a long tail to their coming out of it. I am therefore working closely with my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Department for Work and Pensions to support workers who lose their jobs as well.