Ellie Reeves
Main Page: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and East Dulwich)Department Debates - View all Ellie Reeves's debates with the HM Treasury
(4 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend has spoken passionately about this issue before, and I look forward to continuing conversations with him. I am of course keeping those measures under review. As I said at the time, there is of course parity in the level of support, but the nature of the schemes is different in the sense that employers who have been closed and have to make employment decisions, potentially 45 days in advance in respect of redundancies, do need to be treated slightly differently in that regard. I will of course continue to keep all things, including that scheme, under review.
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab) [V]
Women who are eligible for the self-employed income support scheme but have taken a period of maternity leave since 2016 could receive up to one third less financial support. This discriminates against women on lower incomes in particular, penalises families with young children, and exacerbates the gender pay gap. Will the Chancellor therefore exempt periods of maternity leave from the self-employed income support scheme calculations?
Rishi Sunak
People have ups and downs and variations in their earnings for all sorts of reasons, whether because of maternity, ill health or something else. To deal with that, we have provided an average of income over up to three years on a look-back basis, to smooth out all the ups and downs in all people’s incomes. That was something that stakeholder groups were keen to see at the beginning, it is something that we delivered, and I believe it provides the fairest way to treat everybody, on a level playing field, whatever their circumstances. A three-years averaging of earnings seems to me to be a reasonable approach to take.