Damien Moore

There is a significant package of financial support currently available to pubs to help with the difficulties caused by Covid-19 and the associated social distancing measures the Government has put in place. The wide range of schemes include:

• Grants under the Retail, Hospitality and Leisure Grant Fund (RHGLF) and the Small Business Grant Fund (SBGF) for eligible businesses;
• Government-backed loans through schemes such as the Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS), the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) and the Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CLBILS);
• Access to the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) to furlough workers, which will continue in its current form until 31 July and then in a more flexible form from August until 31 October;
• A business rates holiday for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses for the 2020 to 2021 tax year; and
• The option to defer VAT payments due between 20 March and 30 June until 31 March 2021.

We continue to keep our support for pubs under review and to engage with the sector.

The Department is committed to becoming net zero by 2050 at the latest and work is in progress to meet that target. It is too early to give an estimate of the financial effect on the department.

The Department undertook an energy audit in 2019 and we are currently undertaking a range of works, including installation of LED lighting, to reduce our energy consumption. We have established a sustainability board to oversee our planning on net zero. Since 2010 we have:

- Reduced carbon emissions by 65%

- Reduced waste production by 72%

- Eradicated the majority of single-use plastics, including preventing 120,000 single use coffee cups from going to landfill in 2019.

The Department is committed to becoming net zero by 2050 at the latest and work is in progress to meet that target. It is too early to give an assessment of the non-financial effect on the Department.

The Department undertook an energy audit in 2019 and we are currently undertaking a range of works, including installation of LED lighting, to reduce our energy consumption. We have established a sustainability board to oversee our planning on net zero. Since 2010 we have:

- Reduced carbon emissions by 65%

- Reduced waste production by 72%

- Eradicated the majority of single-use plastics, including preventing 120,000 single use coffee cups from going to landfill in 2019.

Sports and physical activity facilities play a crucial role in supporting adults and children to be active and the Government has been committed to reopening facilities as soon as it is safe to do so. On 13 August, the Government announced that indoor play and indoor soft play venues could open from 15 August. Indoor play and indoor soft play venues have been able to access the unprecedented financial support package that the Government has provided businesses across the economy during the pandemic.

Antenatal classes are provided by the NHS. Like all areas of NHS care, maternity services will be affected by the pandemic, but antenatal contact and new baby visits should continue. Maternity units are working to ensure services are provided in a way that is safe, supported by greater use of digital and remote technologies.

Video consultation capability by NHS providers has rapidly been scaled up in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Attend Anywhere is a web-based video consultation platform intended for use on tablets, smartphones, laptops or PC’s with a webcam and is funded by NHS England and NHS Improvement for all maternity providers to use.

On 13 August, the Government announced that indoor play and indoor soft play venues could open from 15 August. We worked with BALPPA, the trade body that represents the industry to develop guidance that lays out detailed measures for indoor play and indoor soft play operators to make venues COVID-secure. These include closing ball pits and sensory areas, reducing capacity of venues and soft play frames, regular deep cleaning, pre-bookable timed sessions, increased sanitation, and a rigorous process to support track and trace. We will continue to engage with the sector and will keep the guidance under regular review.

We have published guidance on how to open guest accommodation businesses safely whilst minimising the risks of COVID-19.

If a guest is displaying signs of COVID-19 while staying in overnight accommodation, they should inform the accommodation provider, immediately self-isolate where they are to minimise any risk of transmission, and request a test. If they are confirmed to have COVID-19, they should return home if they reasonably can. If a guest cannot reasonably return home, their circumstances should be discussed with an appropriate health care professional and, if necessary, the local authority.

Unless otherwise provided for in the contractual terms of the booking, the guest will be expected to pay the costs of an extended stay in all but exceptional circumstances. Exceptional circumstances may include, but are not limited to, where the accommodation provider has failed to follow government guidance to create a COVID-secure environment.

The Government has developed a comprehensive support package to help businesses and workers deal with various COVID-related pressures, which hotel and bed and breakfast businesses can continue to access.

Keeping children safe is our utmost priority.

From 20 July, early years settings (including nurseries and childminders) have been allowed to return to normal group sizes. This is because there is moderate to high scientific confidence in evidence suggesting younger children are less likely to become ill with COVID-19, and high scientific confidence that children of all ages have less severe symptoms than adults if they do get ill. Furthermore, early years settings are already required to operate within strict staff-child ratio and space requirements.

We continue to expect that early years settings will consider how they can minimise mixing within settings, for example where they use different rooms for different age groups, keeping those groups apart as much as possible.

Settings are also required to follow a Public Health England endorsed ‘system of controls’ to minimise risks. For example, enhanced cleaning, thorough hand cleaning, and the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) where applicable. Detailed guidance has been issued and is available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/safe-working-in-education-childcare-and-childrens-social-care/safe-working-in-education-childcare-and-childrens-social-care-settings-including-the-use-of-personal-protective-equipment-ppe; and here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-early-years-and-childcare-closures.

Activities for families and their young children, for example baby and toddler groups, can operate provided they, and the premises they operate from, follow relevant government guidance.

Guidance on which premises and businesses are legally able to open is available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/further-businesses-and-premises-to-close/further-businesses-and-premises-to-close-guidance.

Providers should also have regard to and, where relevant, ensure that they are following guidance on the safe use of multi-purpose community facilities, which is available at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-guidance-for-the-safe-use-of-multi-purpose-community-facilities.

Ofsted registered early years providers should ensure they are following guidance for early years and childcare providers, which is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-early-years-and-childcare-closures.

Our guidance for early years providers details the package of support the government has put in place for workers and businesses which will benefit childcare settings, including:

• confirmation that the government will continue to pay local authorities for free early years entitlement places for 2, 3 and 4-year-olds

• the Self-employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS), which my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced would be extended from 29 May. Those eligible under the SEISS will be able to claim a second and final grant in August, which will be capped at £6,570 in total

• for the self-employed (including childminders), the minimum income floor has been temporarily relaxed, meaning Universal Credit can be accessed at a rate to match statutory sick pay

The guidance can be found here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-early-years-and-childcare-closures/coronavirus-covid-19-early-years-and-childcare-closures#funding.

Further information about the Chancellor’s announcement is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/chancellor-extends-self-employment-support-scheme-and-confirms-furlough-next-steps.

Following my right hon. Friend, the Prime Minister’s announcement on 28 May that the government’s five tests have been met, the decision was made, based on all the evidence, to ask childcare providers to welcome back all children below statutory school age from the week commencing 1 June. This includes childminders who will additionally be able to care for school aged children, up to the statutory maximum and in line with their current Ofsted registration. The department has published a planning guide to help childcare providers prepare to open their settings for all children, which is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/preparing-for-the-wider-opening-of-early-years-and-childcare-settings-from-1-june.

As my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education, announced to the House on 18 March, the Government has taken the difficult decision to cancel all examinations due to take place in schools and colleges in England this summer, as part of the fight to prevent the spread of coronavirus. This includes all GCSE examinations.

The Department’s priority for GCSE students is to ensure they can move on as planned to the next stage of their education, including starting college, sixth form courses or apprenticeships, in the autumn. We will ensure they are awarded a grade which reflects their work. Our intention is that a grade will be awarded this summer based on the best available evidence, including any non-examination assessment that students have already completed. The qualifications regulator Ofqual is working urgently with examination boards to set out proposals for how this process will work and more information will be provided as soon as possible.

The Department recognises that some students may nevertheless feel disappointed that they have not been able to sit their examinations. If they do not believe the correct process has been followed in their case, they will be able to appeal on that basis. In addition, if they do not feel their calculated grade reflects their performance, they will have the opportunity to sit an examination, as soon as is reasonably possible after the beginning of the new academic year. Students will also have the option to sit their examinations in summer 2021.

Childcare providers are making a vital contribution in our fight against Covid-19. The Department for Education has confirmed that it will not claw back funding from local authorities for any periods of closures where settings are closed on medical advice or if children are not able to attend due to Covid-19. The government expects local authorities to follow the department’s position, and continue early years entitlements funding for childminders, pre-schools and nurseries. This should also apply to those infant and primary schools that deliver the early years entitlements. This will minimise short-term disruptions to early years providers’ finances and allow the system to recover more quickly.

My right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has also announced a package of support for businesses that will include many early years and childcare providers. This includes business rates relief, a range of loans and grants and the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme.

The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme means that for employees who are not working but kept on payroll, the government will contribute 80% of each worker’s wages of up to £2,500, backdated to 1 March 2020. Providers can access this scheme while continuing to be paid the early entitlements funding via local authorities.

The department continues to work alongside Public Health England and with early years sector representatives to ensure that measures taken are in the best interests of the health of our nation whilst minimising the impact on individual childcare settings.

The latest guidance for schools and other educational settings can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/coronavirus-covid-19-guidance-for-schools-and-other-educational-settings.

DFID works through a limited number of partners in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and has robust controls against fraud and the diversion of aid. We select our partners for the strong safeguards they have in place, which reduces risk and ensures the maximum impact of UK aid for Palestinians. DFID’s funding agreements commit partners to understand and comply with UK and international counter terrorism legislation. Each programme also undergoes an audit of funds to assure that UK Aid was spent in line with agreed project activities.

We received numerous representations about the potential changes to Southport to Manchester Piccadilly train service as part of the consultation on Manchester timetable changes that was held earlier this year, including from the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority. These responses are still being considered.

The Chancellor has announced the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme to help firms continue to keep people in employment. Employers can put workers on temporary leave and the government will pay them cash grants of 80% of their wages up to a cap of £2,500, providing they keep the worker employed.

The Chancellor has also confirmed that, depending on their status, workers on zero hours contracts may be eligible for the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and we would urge people to explore this avenue too.

The Chancellor has announced a Self-Employed Income Support Scheme that will help millions of people across the UK, with those eligible receiving a cash grant worth 80% of their average monthly trading profit over the last three years. This covers 95% of people who receive the majority of their income from self-employment.

The scheme brings parity with the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, whereby the Government committed to pay up to £2,500 each month in wages of employed workers who are furloughed during the outbreak.

No data is available on the effectiveness of a single dose or two doses of the COVID-19 vaccines in people taking immunosuppressant medications, therefore no assessment has been made.

We want routine NHS services to return for patients as quickly as possible, but this must be done in a safe and managed way, ensuring that we maintain the capacity for any further surge in COVID-19 activity. The resumption of non-urgent operations will be prioritised at local level based on local demands, ensuring that the most urgent cases are seen first, whilst ensuring surge capacity can be stood up again should it be needed.

Dental practices have been able to open for face to face National Health Service care, including routine care, from 8 June. Decisions on when to reopen for private care are a matter for the practice concerned. The guidance from NHS England and NHS Improvement to NHS contract holders was clear that the pace of the restart should be only as fast as possible compatible with maximizing safety for patients and dental staff. A copy of the letter that was published can be found at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavirus/wp-ontent/uploads/sites/52/2020/03/Urgent-dental-care-letter-28-May.pdf

There are also currently over 600 urgent dental centres which remain open across England to ensure patients can continue to have access to urgent treatment while practices gradually restart a full range of care.

Dentists are using clinical priority to decide which patients to see first and, where they have capacity, they are free to also restart routine non-urgent appointments.

We continue to work closely with the National Health Service and partners and guidance has already been issued to the NHS on the process of starting to restore urgent non-COVID-19 services in a safe way. The approach will be flexed at local level according to capacity and demand in different parts of the country and will be gradual.

Approaches to management of B12 injections during the pandemic are a local matter.

The British Committee for Standards in Haematology (BCSH), which operates independently of Department and NHS England and produces evidence-based guidelines on the diagnosis and treatment of haematological disease, has published a range of general and specific haematology guidance for clinicians in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. This includes new guidance on the management of both dietary and non-dietary B12 deficiency. On B12 injections the BCSH guidance recommends that screening questions for COVID-19 infection are asked before patients attend their general practitioner (GP) surgeries. Alternatives to attending the GP surgery such as local pharmacies or home administration by district nurses should be explored. The guidance can be found at the following link:

b-s-h.org.uk/media/18259/bsh-guidance-b12-replacement-covid-1924042020finalversion2020-4-3.pdf

I am grateful for the work of my Honourable Friend the Member for Southport, as the Prime Minister’s Trade Envoy for Libya and Tunisia.

The UK is supporting the UN-led political process in Libya. Peace and stability is the best way to create opportunities for investment and trade. The recent appointment of a new interim executive authority is positive and the Prime Minister has spoken to PM-designate Dabaiba.

The UK works with Tunisia to support political and economic reform. The Bilateral Association Agreement entered into force on 1 January and provides a platform to deepen trade and investment.

Where individuals have been advised to shield, guidance available on gov.uk should be followed wherever possible. Employers are expected to support staff to safely shield.

Those working for fully funded public sector organisations, including those that need to shield, should be paid as normal out of existing budgets.

Arrangements should have been made to facilitate working from home wherever possible, and reprioritisation and redeployment should be considered to minimise issues with service delivery.

In public sector organisations not fully funded by public grants, where working from home has not been possible, shielding staff were eligible for furlough, and the scheme continues to support them. In all instances, CJRS claims should remain proportionate to the impact on revenue disruption, and those that need to shield should be furloughed before other staff. It should be noted that from 1 July, employees can only be furloughed if they have completed the minimum 3-week furlough period between 1 March and 30 June.

Similarly, guidance issued by NHS England states that staff will continue to receive full pay for any period in which they are required to self-isolate as a result of public health advice.

The Chancellor has been clear that the NHS will receive as much funding as needed to manage the Covid-19 outbreak, with £31.9 billion of support now approved for health and care services.

In April, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) announced a series of measures intended to provide temporary support to consumers that have been affected by the coronavirus outbreak, including a three-month payment holiday on personal loans. Ministers recognise the important role payment holidays play in supporting people through this period and have engaged with lenders throughout. The government will continue to work closely with the FCA and industry on the next steps for payment holidays.

Any entity with a UK payroll can apply for the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS), including businesses, charities, recruitment agencies and public authorities, providing they have a UK bank account, have enrolled for PAYE online, and have created and started a PAYE payroll scheme on or before 19 March 2020.

As the guidance on the CJRS on GOV.UK sets out, the Government expects that the scheme will not be used by many public sector organisations, as the majority of public sector employees are continuing to provide essential public services or contribute to the response to the coronavirus outbreak.

Where employers receive public funding for staff costs, and that funding is continuing, the Government expects employers to use that money to pay staff in the usual fashion; and not to furlough them.

Furloughed employees must have been on their employer’s PAYE payroll and HMRC must have received an RTI (Real Time Information) submission notifying payment in respect of that employee on or before 19 March 2020. The use of RTI allows HMRC to verify claims in the most efficient and timely way, ensuring payments can be made quickly while reducing the risk of fraud. Without the use of RTI returns it would be difficult to verify claims without significant additional checks, which would delay payment for genuine claims.

The Government is also supporting people on low incomes who need to rely on the welfare system through a significant package of temporary measures. This includes a £20 per week increase to the Universal Credit standard allowance and Working Tax Credit basic element, and a nearly £1bn increase in support for renters through increases to the Local Housing Allowance rates for Universal Credit and Housing Benefit claimants. These changes will benefit all new and existing claimants. Anyone can check their eligibility and apply for Universal Credit by visiting: https://www.gov.uk/universal-credit.

The Government has announced an unprecedented package of support for businesses and individuals during the Covid-19 outbreak.

This includes the deferral of certain VAT and Self-Assessment payments in 2020-21, and the waiving of associated interest and penalties.

HMRC have also scaled up their Time to Pay (TTP) service, where individual and business taxpayers can agree tailored plans to defer certain tax payments due, and repay them over an agreed period of time. These arrangements can include any tax or duty administered by HMRC, including PAYE. Interest will continue to accrue on TTP arrangements, in the usual way, to cover the costs to Government of late payment.

The automatic visa extension offer for key frontline health workers, applies to anyone subject to UK immigration control, who works in one of the defined eligible occupations, and whose visa expires between 31 March and 1 October. It also covers immediate family members of those who are eligible.

The UK has a strong reputation for tackling terrorist financing and we work very closely with international partners and financial institutions to exchange and analyse information. This ensures we are better able to detect, prevent and disrupt the movement of global terrorist funds. Our EU cooperation is part of a wider landscape of international counter terrorism work, which includes cooperation through relationships such as Interpol, the Five Eyes, and bilateral work with individual countries.

The entirety of Hizballah is proscribed and designated under the UK’s domestic counter terrorism sanctions regime (the Terrorist Asset-Freezing etc. Act 2010 (TAFA)). Hizballah’s Military Wing is also designated along with two named individuals associated with the group under the EU CP931 regime. The investigation and prosecution of offences relating to proscribed organisations is a matter for the police and the Crown Prosecution Service.

The Government will publish the report of the Independent Review of Administrative Law alongside its response to the report in due course.

The Government will publish the report of the Independent Review of Administrative Law alongside its response to the report in due course.

To ensure the safety of the physical estate and continue our efforts to tackle demand on the system we invested £142m in court buildings and facilities, and a further £110m to make the estate Covid-secure, recruit 1,600 additional staff, and create more Nightingale Courts.

This funding – the largest investment in justice for decades – helped the system to turn a corner in December 2020 so that we were closing the same number of cases as before the pandemic in almost all jurisdictions, including Crown Courts.

There is further to go, and through our Spending Review settlement, we have secured significant additional funding next financial year to recover our courts and tribunals system.