Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps he is taking to help people that are employed on regular seasonal contracts in the (a) tourism industry and (b) Royal National Lifeboat Institution during the covid-19 outbreak.

The Chancellor has set out unprecedented support for workers - including seasonal workers across the tourism industry - to protect them against the current economic emergency. This includes the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and the Self-Employed Income Support Scheme.

After consultation with businesses, we have changed the cut-off date for employees to be employed and paid from 28 February to 19 March (the day before the Job Retention Scheme was announced). This means that over 200,000 more people will benefit.

This change expands the scheme to cover more workers, whilst keeping the fraud risks under control.