Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if his Department will make an assessment of the potential merits of amending the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme to not require businesses who have yet to reopen and have no income to start contributing to the scheme from August 2020.

The furlough scheme will remain open until October. It is right that in the final months of this eight-month scheme, the Government asks employers to make a reasonable contribution towards their employees’ wages.

An early assessment of CJRS claims suggested that about 40% of employers had not made a claim for employer NICs costs or employer pension contributions and so were likely to be unaffected by the change in August, assuming their employment patterns did not change.

If an average claim lasted 8 months, the total cost of employer contributions would represent 5% of the gross employment costs an employer would have incurred had the employee not been furloughed.