Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps he is taking to support taxi drivers in covid-19 tier 3 areas.

The Government has announced several measures available to UK businesses, including the taxi and private hire sector, to support them through this challenging time, and launched a ‘support finder’ tool to help businesses and self-employed workers quickly and easily determine what financial support is available to them during the coronavirus pandemic.

From 2 December, councils in England in Tier 2 and Tier 3 will receive funding to provide grants to closed businesses and to be able to run local discretionary grant schemes to provide support to affected businesses. These allocations will be published shortly and are in addition to the £2.3bn already provided to local councils since the start of the pandemic. The Local Authority administers the scheme and determines on a case-by-case basis where to allocate this funding.