Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what estimate he has made of the number of businesses, by sector, that have reduced the number of people they employ since the start of the covid-19 outbreak.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publish data in their Business Impacts of Coronavirus Survey (BICS) on the percentage of businesses, who have not permanently stopped trading, that have made redundancies in the last two weeks. Between 21^st September to 4^th October, surveyed business reported that 1% of their workforce were made redundant. This data, including industry breakdowns, can be found at:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/economicoutputandproductivity/output/datasets/businessimpactofcovid19surveybicsresults.

The Government is committed to supporting businesses and workers during this pandemic. Through the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, we have supported 9.6 million jobs, across 1.2 million employers, with claims worth £41.4 billion. My Rt. Hon. Friend Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer has announced that this scheme will be extended until the 31^st March 2021, providing both support and certainty to businesses.