Covid-19: Financial Support

Charlotte Cane Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Charlotte Cane (Ely and East Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Manuela Perteghella) on securing the debate and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for making time for it.

As we approach the six-year anniversary of the first lockdown, I am sure that many colleagues will agree that the time of face masks, social distancing and self-isolation feels so very long ago. However, for millions of individuals and countless businesses, it has been an even more arduous six years. As we have heard, research now suggests that about 3.8 million UK taxpayers were excluded from any support and did not enjoy the security that so many of the rest of us did.

As we reflect on the ongoing fallout of the pandemic, it is vital that we take on lessons learnt, but the matter of groups excluded from financial support during the pandemic is not one we have learnt about only in retrospect. Issues were raised at the time—in real time—and the failure to listen and act is one that any Government must recognise and make efforts to rectify.

We all understood why the initial schemes were targeted to support the majority of people—employees and established self-employed people—but we waited in vain for the then Conservative Government to provide support schemes for the other 3.8 million people. One outstanding issue, as we have heard, was the unnecessarily rigid criteria for the self-employed income support scheme. The glaring issue was the exclusion of the recently self-employed, as entitlement required a tax return from the year 2018-19. That, combined with the 50% income rule, which hon. Members have mentioned, prevented many people from getting any help. We have heard too about women who may have kept their businesses ticking over for a few years while they were on a maternity break or caring for someone, who found that their support was based on a low-income year rather than more representative years.

Many small businesses were forced to take out bounce back loans. The Government have estimated that many such loans will not be recoverable because many businesses were forced to close. However, those that have clung on are still working to pay the loans off—all while working in an environment of spiralling energy costs and a business rates system that still does not work properly. I visited one such business in my constituency only last week. To manage current costs, the owners have reduced staff and taken on more of the work themselves. They have run through the figures for next year, and the expected rise in business rates plus their covid loan repayments mean that they are considering selling up or closing the business.

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Clapham and Brixton Hill) (Lab)]

While many small businesses in my constituency were grateful for the support they received, their main concern, which many repeated to me, was about the abrupt end to support measures. Almost overnight, small businesses found themselves having to repay loans, and cover staff wages and all those other expenses, even though the economy had not bounced back and their sales had not returned to pre-covid levels. Does the hon. Lady agree that we need to ensure that in the event of a future crisis, as well as not excluding those who need support, anything given to people to help them through such a period does not end with a cliff edge but is tapered to allow them to adjust to the post-crisis system?

[Charlotte Cane]

I agree. When we set up something to deal with an initial crisis, it is really important that we do not take it away too quickly when the crisis may be over but the economy, as the hon. Member said, still has not bounced back.

After facing the turmoil of the pandemic, small businesses, many of whose directors were also unable to claim financial support, have been afforded little by way of meaningful relief, all the while barely affording to cover their costs. Those small businesses contribute so much to our local economies and communities as much valued hubs. I see that time and again in the towns and villages across my constituency.

One of my constituents suffered particularly badly. He ran a specialist travel business whose income inevitably collapsed during covid. He got no support—he was actually told by a local Conservative that they saw

“no point in supporting those whose jobs won’t exist”.

He had had hope because Labour in opposition criticised the Conservatives’ lack of support for the 3.8 million, but now he feels “disheartened and abandoned” in what he describes as the “tumbleweed” since Labour came to power. Through determination and hard work, he has rebuilt his business, but he wants to ensure that future self-employed generations do not suffer what he calls the same nightmare.

The pandemic has done deep and lasting damage, but we must recognise that simply learning a lesson does not go far enough. It is not too late for the Government to fill the gaps in pandemic financial support, relieve businesses of their burdens and provide meaningful support to those often financially vulnerable people who missed out unnecessarily. Will the Minister now recognise that covid-19 financial relief failed to provide fair and even support, and take steps to ease the ongoing burdens faced as a result?