Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Thomson Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

In common with schemes all around the world, the schemes are for furloughed workers. The check is that the company decides to put an employee into a furlough scheme rather than retain them as employed. That is exactly the same as every other scheme. It is not possible to design a scheme that deals with flexible hours, with the result that the state would essentially be subsidising the wages of almost the entire workforce. It is something that we looked at in detail and, given the time we have available, we went with a scheme that could be delivered and is in common with almost every scheme around the world that does exactly the same thing.

[Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)]

It is vital that we work across party lines at this time, and the SNP very much welcomes the Chancellor’s economic package for firms and workers announced last Friday. Given that millions of small businesses, freelancers and the self-employed are understandably concerned about their incomes, we welcome the fact that the Chancellor is considering a response to that and understand that it is important to get it right, but when does he expect to be able to come back to the House and announce the details?

[Rishi Sunak]

As I said, we are looking at these things. I will not commit to a specific day until we know we can work through the details. One of the issues is that of course there are people whose incomes have been enormously impacted by what is going on currently, but there are also millions of people who are self-employed whose incomes may not have been impacted and, indeed, might be increasing. The ability of the Government to distinguish between those people, based on tax returns that are over a year and a half out of date, poses some very significant challenges in terms of fairness and affordability.

[Richard Thomson]

I thank the Chancellor for that answer, and our offer to work with him to protect incomes remains open. As part of his deliberations on this and in order to simplify the process of getting the money to where it needs to go, will he consider using the tax and welfare system to roll out a universal basic income in these times?

[Rishi Sunak]

We are not in favour of a universal basic income, although we have strengthened the safety net for the most vulnerable in our society, with more than £7 billion invested into improving our welfare system for this year, including improvements to universal credit, employment support allowance and, indeed, the local housing allowance. Those payments are all available more quickly, more easily and more generously than they were before, and I know that will make an enormous difference to many vulnerable people.