Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of ensuring that people with (a) diabetes and (b) other clinically vulnerable conditions are able to (i) work from home and (ii) receive fair remuneration if their employer cannot guarantee a covid-19 safe workplace.

The advice to those who are clinically vulnerable (but not extremely clinically vulnerable) remains that they should take extra care to follow hygiene and social distancing guidelines but they can leave their homes, including to go to work. This includes employees with diabetes.

The Government is clear that in order to prevent the spread of coronavirus, anyone who can work from home should still do so. Employers also have a legal duty to make sure the workplace is safe for their employees. Where working from home is not possible, employers should provide the safest onsite roles available to enable clinically vulnerable employees to follow social distancing measures.

In addition, the Government has set out an unprecedented package of financial support to help the country through the coronavirus pandemic, such as the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme which has supported 9.2million jobs.