Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what consultation he undertook with directors of small companies, who file their PAYE RTI returns annually, on the design and introduction of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme.

The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) has seen 1.2 million employers apply to help to pay the wages of 9.6 million furloughed jobs. In light of the path of the virus, the CJRS has been extended until the end of March 2021 for all parts of the UK.

Those paid annually are eligible to claim, as long as they meet the relevant conditions including being notified to HMRC on an RTI real-time information submission between 20 March and 30 October. These cut-off dates allow as many people as possible to be included by going right up to the day before the announcement, balancing the risk of fraud that existed as soon as the scheme became public.