Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will make an assessment of the merits of the 30 October 2020 Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme eligibility date to ensure that workers who took on employment after that date are able to access the Income Support Scheme.

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 Chancellor has always been clear that the Government would keep the situation under review, adapting its approach as the context evolved. The Government will set out the next phase of the plan to tackle the virus and protect jobs at Budget.