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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what guidance his Department has published on how redundancy payments should be calculated for employees who have been furloughed during the covid-19 outbreak; and whether rates of pay for furloughed employees who have had variable working hours will be based on the hours they worked prior to being placed on furlough.

The provisions relating to calculation of redundancy and notice pay under the Employment Rights Act continue to apply when an individual is on the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme.

Employees who are dismissed due to redundancy and who satisfy certain qualifying conditions are statutorily entitled to a lump sum from their employer, based on their age, length of service and contractual weekly earnings, subject to a statutory upper limit, payable at, or soon after, the dismissal date.

As per the guidance for the Coronavirus Job Retention scheme, grants cannot be used to substitute redundancy payments. We would urge employers not to use the Job Retention Scheme to make someone redundant on less favourable terms than they would otherwise have received.

Full guidance on how to calculate rates of pay for employees on variable hours can be found at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/calculate-how-much-you-can-claim-using-the-coronavirus-job-retention-scheme.