Covid-19: Economic Costs

Lord McNicol of West Kilbride Excerpts

Tuesday 28th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn]

My noble friend the Minister in the Department for Transport will be able to give more detail about this subject in response to the Private Notice Question, but I can say that new data from the Spanish health ministry was published on Friday showing that new cases reported across the country on Thursday and Friday were up by 75% on those reported for the previous two days. This has been a fast-moving and changing situation in Spain to which the Government have reacted.

[Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, my question is about specific localised job protection measures. Having read the report mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and taken note of its recommendations, and given the experience of managing the recent local lockdown in Leicester, what plans if any have Her Majesty’s Government for such specific localised job protection measures? If, as the report suggests, we move towards a more targeted approach, rather than the initial general approach, this will be critical.

[Baroness Penn]

I remind the noble Lord that many of the job protection schemes that we have set up remain in place, the biggest one being the job retention scheme, which will run until the end of October. We have also provided additional resources to, for example, Leicester, which has had to deal with a localised lockdown. As our test and trace data becomes even more detailed and accurate, we would like to target these measures even more in order to reduce any local economic impact.