Coronavirus: Job-Support Schemes

Stephen Farry Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Farry (North Down) (Alliance)]

I want to start by acknowledging the scale of the intervention from the Government with regard to the self-employed support scheme and the job retention scheme, and also to recognise the speed with which they moved to put those in place. But what could have been a universally good and welcome story has been somewhat soured by the gaps that have been identified. I do accept that gaps were inevitable, especially with something that was put in place so quickly: that is not the criticism. Where there is valid criticism is in the fact that many solutions have been put forward over the intervening months, and these have been essentially pushed back without any real consideration of those who have been dismissed. Whenever we write to the Treasury or HMRC, we tend to get the schemes explained back to us when we are actually asking for flexibilities around them. We know the rules around them already—that was not exactly the point.

Many Members have raised concerns about this on the Floor of the House. All the Opposition parties have spoken to the Prime Minister behind the scenes and received warm words but no action. It is important that we pay tribute to groups like ExcludedUK who have been campaigning on this issue. The fact that we now have the all-party parliamentary group on ExcludedUK established under the leadership of the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone), with 180 Members signed up to it for its first meeting, is an indication of the scale, right across this House, of the concern around these ongoing situations. I am certainly pleased to have become the secretary of that group, and declare that for the record.

The Chair of the Treasury Committee, the right hon. Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride), has outlined the different categories, so there is no need to repeat that, but I do want to pay tribute to the work of the Committee and its report. Some of the gaps that have been identified are around young entrepreneurs and freelancers. They are the future of the economy, and we have a Government who want to encourage entrepreneurship, in theory at the very least. People are offended by being labelled as potential fraud risks. There are also issues around access to finance, given that some of them depend on different types of finance rather than through the traditional banks. There is also an issue emerging around 14 July as the qualifying date for the second phase of the self-employment scheme, which ignores the fact that some people have not been able to work through June but are only now, through the relaxation of the rules, going back into work.

I also want to put on record the issue around Northern Ireland driving licences and the use of Irish passports for registration. While a workaround solution was found in that regard, some people from Northern Ireland have had to jump through more hoops than others, and that reflects some of the problems of putting the Good Friday agreement identity rights into law in the UK as a whole. We need to fix the gaps and extend the future prospects of the key areas of aerospace, tourism and the leisure.