Scott Mann
Main Page: Scott Mann (Conservative - North Cornwall)Department Debates - View all Scott Mann's debates with the HM Treasury
(4 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
Scott Mann (North Cornwall) (Con)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Rishi Sunak)
The Government remain committed to doing what they can to support businesses, our people and public services. In the last week, I have announced unprecedented measures to support business, including over £300 billion of Government-backed loans, £20 billion of tax cuts and grants, a VAT deferral worth 1.5% of GDP and a landmark job retention scheme guaranteeing 80% of the wages of furloughed workers. We believe that these measures represent the most comprehensive and generous suite of interventions of any major developed country in the world.
Rishi Sunak
I thank my hon. Friend for the question. I will be making further announcements about progress on these measures. It is something that we have been looking at in intense detail over the past week in the Treasury. What I can say to him is that we are in dialogue with all the key stakeholder groups, including calls that I am having today with several of those bodies. There are genuine practical and principled reasons why it is incredibly complicated to design a scheme that is analogous to the one that we have for employed workers, but he can rest assured that we absolutely understand the situation that many self-employed people face at the moment as a result of what is happening and we are determined to find a way to support them. We need to be confident that that can be done in a way that is deliverable and fair to the vast majority of the British workforce.
Scott Mann
On behalf of my residents in North Cornwall, I thank the Treasury for the support that it has put in place for employees and employers over the last few days, with this unprecedented series of events. Like my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard), I want to ask about self-employment. I have a huge number of self-employed people in North Cornwall. I know that the Treasury is under a huge amount of pressure at this time, but I urge expediency on that so that we can get a package of measures in place for them, too.
Rishi Sunak
As I said, we are looking at this in immense detail and at pace. As has been acknowledged by many stakeholders in the industry, there are genuine questions about practicality, fairness and delivery of any such support scheme, which is why it requires careful thought.