Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of (a) reviewing the cut-off date of 30 October 2020 for the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and (b) extending that scheme in light of the third national covid-19 lockdown announced on 5 January 2021.

For all eligibility decisions under the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS), the Government must balance the need to support as many jobs as possible with the need to protect the scheme from fraud.

Under the CJRS extension, an employer can claim for employees who were employed and on their PAYE payroll on 30 October 2020. The employer must have made a PAYE Real Time Information (RTI) submission to HMRC between 20 March 2020 and 30 October 2020, notifying a payment of earnings for that employee. The 30 October 2020 cut-off date allowed as many people as possible to be included by going right up to the day before the announcement, while balancing the risk of fraud that existed as soon as the scheme became public. Extending the cut-off date further would have significantly increased the risk of abuse because claims could not be confidently verified against the risk of fraud by using the data after this point.

The Government will provide a further update on the CJRS at Budget 2021.

The Government understands that the new restrictions are challenging for some businesses. On 5 January, the Chancellor announced an extra £4.6 billion to protect jobs and support affected businesses as restrictions get tougher, including a new one-off grant of up to £9,000 to support businesses in England which are legally required to close. This comes in addition to the existing monthly grants for closed businesses of up to £3,000 per month. Local authorities will also receive an additional £500 million, to a total of £1.6 billion, of discretionary funding to allow them to support their local businesses.

The CJRS is not the only support available for employees. The Government has boosted the generosity of the welfare system by £7.4 billion in 2020-21 including through a temporary £20 a week increase in the Universal Credit standard allowance and Working Tax Credit basic element.