Covid-19 Economic Support Package

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Wednesday 14th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The only sustainable way to protect jobs in the long run is to have an economy that is open and functioning. No amount of support can make up for that.

There are other things we have done: eased repayment terms on those loans through pay as you grow; delivered on our promise to give the NHS what it needs; backed hundreds of thousands of young people to find good jobs through the kickstart scheme and new investment in training and apprenticeships; created green jobs through the £2 billion green grant programme; showed that we are here for our cultural sector, with the cultural recovery fund and a further support package for charities; and invested hundreds of billions of pounds in the largest, most sustained programme of infrastructure investment the UK has seen in decades. That is comprehensive action to protect the jobs and livelihoods of the British people. It undermines the credibility of the Labour party that, in the face of all that support, it continues to pretend that insufficient action is being taken.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Chancellor give way?

[Rishi Sunak]

I will make some progress.

As the crisis evolves, our economic response will also evolve. What we will see over the winter is a complex picture of some businesses able to open safely and others being ordered to close to control the spread of the virus. Our winter economy plan provides a toolkit to protect jobs and businesses over the difficult weeks and months to come. The plan has three parts.

First, the job support scheme will protect jobs in businesses that are open or closed. If businesses can open safely, but with reduced or uncertain demand, the Government will directly subsidise people’s wages over the winter, giving those employers the option to bring people back to work on shorter hours rather than making them redundant. We are expanding the job support scheme to give more support to businesses that are ordered to close. For people unable to work for one week or more, their employer will still be able to pay them two thirds of their normal salary and the UK Government will cover the cost. This national programme will benefit people the same wherever they live and whatever job they do.

[Rishi Sunak]

I am glad that there has finally been some acknowledgment that there will be a hit to businesses and jobs from what the Labour party is suggesting. It is right that there is support provided for hospitality, which is why the Government have provided a VAT reduction, a business rates holiday, direct cash grants, eat out to help out and now the job support scheme that is directly there to support those businesses that are open and operating but not at the same levels that they were previously. To give those businesses and their employees certainty, rather than the weeks that I heard about from the hon. Member for Oxford East, this scheme will run for six months through to the spring. This job support scheme is in line with those in most other European countries and, to support the lowest paid through this crisis, we have made our welfare system more generous and responsive too.

[Rachael Maskell]

The Chancellor will know from York’s economic base and the complexity of our economy that unemployment may rise to 27% in our city. What additional measures will he put in place to build the bridge to get us through this really difficult period? The job support scheme will just not deliver for my constituents.

[Rishi Sunak]

The job support scheme was widely welcomed not just by businesses groups such as the CBI and the Federation of Small Businesses but by the TUC, which I was happy to work closely with to design the scheme. However, she is right. That is not the only thing that we will do to support jobs, which is why we have put in place the £2 billion kickstart scheme to provide fully funded job placements for those young people most affected by this crisis and most at risk of unemployment. Thousands of those young kickstarters will be starting their new jobs this autumn.