Protection of Jobs and Businesses

Debate between Jim Shannon and Anneliese Dodds

Wednesday 9th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Anneliese Dodds]

I will make some progress if the Member will permit me. He may find the answers to his questions—any further ones—in what I am going on to say.

In addition to those groups of people who I have just mentioned, we know that there are many others who are concerned about their futures working in parts of the UK that are still subject to local restrictions, or that may be subject to additional restrictions in the future. We also have huge numbers of people, as we have just been discussing, who work in sectors that are still not back to business as usual, despite their critical importance for our economic future—whether we are talking about highly skilled manufacturing or the creative industries—yet the Chancellor is ploughing ahead with this one-size-fits-all withdrawal of the income support schemes, pulling the rug from under thousands of businesses and millions of workers all at the same time, irrespective of their situation. He is doing so without any analysis, it appears, of the impact of this withdrawal on unemployment levels and the enormous long-term costs of so many people being driven out of work.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

One of the categories that comes under severe pressures, as the shadow Minister and others in this House will know, is local councils. Their staff have been furloughed and they are having to take them back but their budgets are squeezed. Does she support my plea that additional help must be given to those councils to protect and retain jobs, because people are operating as a skeleton staff for almost a standard level of service provision, and it is just not possible to deliver that?

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for raising that point. The Government promised local authorities that they would meet their calls to back-fill not just the spending that they have incurred during this period but the income that was lost. What do we have instead? We have a resiling from that promise. That is problematic because of the huge impact it will have on employment in different areas—local authority employment can be a critical part of many economies—but it is also an enormous issue for the economic development in those areas, where ultimately the lack of local leadership will be a huge problem. The Government need to hold to their promise in that regard.