Covid-19: Furloughed Space Grant Scheme

Lord Livermore Excerpts

Monday 15th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn]

The code is designed to encourage landlords and their tenants to find a solution that works for them both. On cash support, in addition to the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and others, we are getting cash directly to businesses, providing business rates relief worth more than £9 billion and providing grants to eligible businesses worth over £10 billion.

[Lord Livermore (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, tens of thousands of businesses are still not receiving support from the Government’s existing schemes. The latest figures show that 45,000 smaller businesses are still waiting for a loan through the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme, and 60% of larger businesses still waiting too. What action are the Government taking to speed up the approval of loans to businesses, many of which have been facing cash flow difficulties for months already?

[Baroness Penn]

The noble Lord is right: some businesses have had trouble accessing the initial loan support schemes. One thing that the Government have done to change this was the introduction of the bounce-back loan scheme, which has significantly increased the speed of approvals for those businesses that qualify. We are also doing other things to help with cash flow that do not rely on such approvals. As I said, 99% of eligible businesses that are also eligible for a rates holiday have already been granted that and we have released £10 billion of cash grants to them as well.