Coronavirus: Job-Support Schemes

Patricia Gibson Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

The Government’s action to save jobs through the job retention scheme was welcome, but there is a growing chorus across this House that too many have fallen through the cracks—the newly employed, the contract workers, the freelancers. This is deeply unfair because these people have been passed over, they have been excluded and they have been abandoned. Of course, whatever system we put in place, this was always going to happen. That is why there should have been a universal system of support for all workers affected. That way, truly no one would have been left behind.

However, there is still time for the Chancellor to put these support mechanisms in place, and we urge him to do so. For example, we urge him to put in place an emergency basic payment to all those who have been left behind. If he does not think that is appropriate or suitable, let us hear his way of dealing with this, because doing nothing is no longer an option. The whole point of the job retention scheme was to save jobs, but if this furlough support is withdrawn too early, on 1 August, and rolled back, it will fail in that goal. The task to save jobs must be completed: it must be allowed to do its job and save tens of thousands of jobs for our constituents.

Of course, the other thing we can do is to convert the loans that businesses have taken out into grants. I petitioned the Chancellor on this very issue in early April, and I am still to receive an answer. The driving force in everything that is done must be about saving jobs and saving our economy. The Bank of England has said that the debt incurred through this crisis must be treated as war debt, and that sounds eminently sensible to me, because in a way this is a war. It has been a war on our health and it has been a war on our economy.

What we need is for the Government to throw every available tool at their disposal at defeating this enemy. We need targeted support for the aviation, tourism and aerospace sector. We need targeted support for our islands, which face a real threat of depopulation. The islands are in a unique position: 300,000 people in the UK live on an island, and they are hit with the double whammy—not just the crippling of our tourism industry, but, as easing takes place, social distancing on the ferries to access islands will create further difficulties for them.

We know that UK Government borrowing will reach £340 billion this year, and quantitative easing will reach £745 billion. Scotland has received a total of £10 billion, but where is the rest of Scotland’s share? What Scotland needs is more effective tools at its disposal to take charge of the situation for ourselves. We need greater powers to deal with this economic tsunami, because that is what it is. It is an economic tsunami, and it is threatening to engulf us, so we need more action, more support for our constituents and more work to save more jobs.