Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of trends of the level of former employees being denied furlough payments for which they are eligible by employers.

Information is not available on the trends of former employees who did not receive furlough payments. HMRC publishes statistics on the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS); the latest release was published on 16 December 2021: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/coronavirus-job-retention-scheme-statistics-16-december-2021.

CJRS was available to all employers with a Pay As You Earn (PAYE) system and to all employees on PAYE, regardless of their employment contract. The key eligibility criteria was that employees had to be on payroll the day before the scheme was announced, so 19 March 2020 for the first and second iterations of CJRS, 30 October 2020 for the third iteration of CJRS, and 2 March 2021 for the fourth iteration of CJRS. Employers also had to have previously notified HMRC, via a PAYE Real Time Information (RTI) submission, about a payment of earnings for that employee.

CJRS grants covered any type of employment contract and employers could claim the grant for the hours their employees and workers on payroll were not working, calculated by reference to their usual hours worked in a claim period. Flexible furlough meant employers could work for any amount of time and any work pattern, while still being able to claim CJRS grant for the hours not worked with reference to hours the employee would usually have worked in that period.

However, employers could not claim for any days from 1 December 2020 during which the furloughed employee was serving a contractual or statutory notice period for the employer. This included people serving notice of retirement or resignation. Normal redundancy rules and protections would have applied in these circumstances.

Ultimately, it was for the employer to decide whether to offer furlough to their employees, and claim the CJRS grant, according to the needs of their business. The employer was under no obligation to access the scheme.

If an employee believes that the employer did make a claim on their behalf, but did not pass this on to the employee, they should tell HMRC.

Reports of COVID-19 scheme abuse can be made to HMRC via their online fraud reporting tool here: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/hm-revenue-customs/contact/report-fraud-to-hmrc.

Calls can also be made anonymously and free of charge to report suspected fraudulent activity to the COVID Fraud Hotline on 0800 587 5030.