Emma Hardy
Main Page: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice)Department Debates - View all Emma Hardy's debates with the HM Treasury
(4 years, 3 months ago)
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Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend is absolutely right: the best way to help businesses and protect people’s jobs is to allow businesses to trade and allow the economy to function as normally as possible. The support we have put in place today will not be used as an excuse not to do that, and as the Prime Minister said, we will be reviewing all these restrictions on a 28-day basis. Of course, we all want to see our local areas get back to as much of normality as they can, as quickly as possible.
Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
One hundred and nine coach companies have gone bust, with 7,100 people made redundant, which is one sixth of the entire coach industry. Coach companies tell me that one reason for that is that they fall between gaps in support, being classified as neither tourism nor essential travel. Please will the Chancellor look urgently into what specific support can be given to the coach industry? Will the relevant Minister meet me and representatives of the sector to discuss their concerns?
Rishi Sunak
I am happy to organise for a relevant Minister to meet the hon. Lady. I hope that those companies—she is right about the difficult time they are experiencing—will have been able to access, for example, the bounce back loans or the coronavirus business interruption loans to help them with cash flow, and ditto with the VAT deferral and time to pay. But I appreciate that it is a difficult time for them, and the best thing we can do is allow more economic activity so they can get their coaches full as quickly as possible.