Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what estimate he has made of the effect on the number of jobs in the tourism sector of ending the VAT Retail Export Scheme; and what steps he is taking to ensure the retention of jobs in that sector after the end of that scheme.
Answered by Jesse Norman
The Government recognises the challenges the tourism sector is facing and is spending billions of pounds supporting people, families and the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Chancellor announced the Winter Economy Plan on 24 September. This includes an extension to the temporary 5 per cent reduced rate of VAT on goods and services supplied by the tourism and hospitality sectors from 12 January to 31 March 2021. This alone provides continued support for the cash flow and viability of over 150,000 businesses and protection for 2.4 million jobs in the tourism and hospitality sectors. This is in addition to the 100% business rates holiday for many businesses, which is worth over £10 billion, and a £1,000 job retention bonus for bringing furloughed employees back to work. The Winter Plan also provides further support to businesses and jobs over the coming months, including through the Job Support Scheme which will protect millions of jobs.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what plans he has to provide funding for an international mobility scheme equivalent to Erasmus+.
Answered by Steve Barclay - Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Decisions on funding for budgets beyond 2020-21 will be considered at future spending review processes, including Spending Review 2020 which will set out 2021-22 departmental budgets in November.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of providing a jobs strategy for disabled people as part of the Government’s covid-19 recovery strategy.
Answered by Steve Barclay - Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
On 8 July 2020, the Chancellor announced the Plan for Jobs, a package of measures which will help people find work by significantly increasing help offered through Jobcentres and providing individualised advice through the National Careers Service. The Chancellor also announced the Kickstart Scheme, a £2bn fund to create hundreds of thousands of new, fully subsidised jobs for young people. People with disabilities are able to access all of the above measures, in addition to the existing disability employment and support offer.
The government’s manifesto committed to reducing the disability employment gap and the government is very aware that people with disabilities face extra barriers in both recruitment and retention.
On recruitment, people with disabilities who have lost their job and require more intensive employment support have access to both the Work and Health Programme and Intensive Personalised Employment Support. In addition, the Disability Confident scheme provides employers with the knowledge, skills and confidence they need to attract, recruit, retain and develop people with disabilities in the workplace.
On retention, the Access to Work programme offers people with disabilities practical in-work support above the level of statutory reasonable adjustments, including a discretionary grant of up to £60,700 per year. The government will continue to look at ways of supporting people with health conditions to stay in work. The government plans to publish a response to the Health is Everyone’s Business consultation by the end of the year. The consultation set out proposals to assist all employers to take early and supportive action to help staff who are managing health conditions in work.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he has made an assessment of the potential merits of enabling newly self-employed people who do not qualify for the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme to submit (a) copies of invoices and verification for services or products and (b) copies of business bank accounts to HMRC to verify payments.
Answered by Jesse Norman
It has not been possible to include those who began trading after the 2018-19 tax year in the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme. This was a very difficult decision and it was taken for practical reasons.
In order to minimise the risk of fraud, the SEISS has been designed to use information already known to HMRC. HMRC would not be able to distinguish genuine self-employed individuals who started trading in 2019-20 from fake applications by fraudulent operators and organised criminal gangs seeking to exploit the SEISS. The Government cannot expose the tax system to these risks.
The newly self-employed may be eligible for other elements of the unprecedented financial support provided by the Government. This package includes Bounce Back loans, tax deferrals, rental support,?increased levels of Universal Credit, mortgage holidays, and other business support grants.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he has made an assessment of the effect of VAT regulations on the financial sustainability of small businesses that have been affected by the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Jesse Norman
All eligible businesses in the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors will pay no business rates in England for 12 months from 1 April 2020, and the Government deferred Value Added Tax (VAT) payments so UK VAT registered businesses did not need to pay any VAT due with VAT returns from 20 March through to the end of June 2020, until 31 March 2021.
HMRC’s Time to Pay service is available to all businesses needing support with tax payments.
Statistics on the use of the VAT deferral are available online: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/hmrc-coronavirus-covid-19-statistics
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to the Answer of 16 June 2020 to Question 56024 on Manufacturing Industries: Coronavirus, what discussions his Department had with Rolls-Royce and on what dates those discussions took place.
Answered by Kemi Badenoch - President of the Board of Trade
Treasury Ministers and officials have meetings with a wide variety of organisations in the public and private sectors as part of the process of policy development and delivery. Details of ministerial and permanent secretary meetings with external organisations on departmental business are published on a quarterly basis and are available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/hmt-ministers-meetings-hospitality-gifts-and-overseas-travel.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to the Answer of 16 June 2020 to Question 56024 on Manufacturing Industries: Coronavirus, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of establishing a Government task-force in relation to UK-based Rolls-Royce jobs.
Answered by Kemi Badenoch - President of the Board of Trade
The Government regularly speaks with manufacturing companies and has worked closely with Rolls Royce in response to COVID-19. Rolls Royce is making use of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) which has so far protected 9.2 million workers and 1.1 million businesses through this crisis (as at midnight 21 June 2020). Rolls has also drawn £300m of short-term finance from the Coronavirus Corporate Financing Facility (CCFF).
Where firms make the decision that they cannot retain all of their staff over the longer run, we are ensuring that those looking for work are supported through a significant package of temporary welfare measures. This includes: £20 per week increase to the Universal Credit standard allowance and Working Tax Credit basic element, and a nearly £1bn increase in support for renters through increases to the Local Housing Allowance rates for Universal Credit and Housing Benefit claimants. These changes will benefit all new and existing claimants.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of amending the Self-Employed Income Support Scheme to remove the eligibility criteria of no more than £50,000 in trading profit profits for the second wave of Government support for self-employed people.
Answered by Jesse Norman
The Self-Employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS) helps those adversely affected by COVID-19. Individuals can at present claim a taxable grant under the SEISS worth 80 per cent of their average monthly trading profits, paid out in a single instalment covering three months’ worth of profits, and capped at £7,500 in total.
The extension of the SEISS announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on 29 May 2020 means that eligible individuals whose businesses are adversely affected by COVID-19 will be able to claim a second and final grant when the scheme reopens for applications in August. This will be a taxable grant worth 70 per cent of their average monthly trading profits, paid out in a single instalment covering three months’ worth of profits, and capped at £6,570 in total.
The SEISS, including the £50,000 threshold for average trading profits, is designed to target those who most need it, and who are most reliant on their self-employment income. The self-employed are very diverse and have a wide mix of turnover and profits, with monthly and annual variations even in normal times, and in some cases with substantial alternative forms of income too: for example, those who had more than £50,000 from trading profits in 2018-19 had an average total income of more than £200,000. Some 95 per cent of those with more than half of their income from self-employment in 2018-19 could be eligible for this scheme.
Those with average trading profits above £50,000 may still be eligible for other elements of the unprecedented financial support package made available by the Government. These measures include Bounce Back Loans, tax deferrals, rental support, increased levels of Universal Credit, mortgage holidays, and other business support grants.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps he plans to take to (a) encourage and (b) support (i) Rolls-Royce and (ii) other similar manufacturing industries to help (A) retain their workforce and (B) prevent mass redundancies in response to the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Kemi Badenoch - President of the Board of Trade
The Government regularly speaks with automotive companies and has worked closely with Rolls Royce in response to COVID-19.
Rolls Royce is making use of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) and has drawn £300m of short-term finance from the Coronavirus Corporate Financing Facility (CCFF).
The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) has so far protected 8.9 million workers and 1.1 million businesses through this crisis (as at midnight 7th June 2020).
All UK employers can apply for a grant that covers 80% of furloughed employees’ usual monthly wage costs, up to £2500 a month, plus the associated Employer National Insurance contributions and pension contributions.
This scheme is available to support 28.5m employees paid via PAYE across the UK.
This is a temporary scheme in place for 8 months starting from 1 March and ending at the end of October.
In addition, we are supporting businesses, by offering Government-backed finance through the Covid Corporate Financing Facility, Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loans, Coronavirus Business Interruption Loans, and the Bounce Back Loans scheme, depending on the size of the company.
Where firms make the decision that they cannot retain all of their staff over the longer run, we are ensuring that those looking for work are supported through a significant package of temporary welfare measures.
This includes: £20 per week increase to the Universal Credit standard allowance and Working Tax Credit basic element, and a nearly £1bn increase in support for renters through increases to the Local Housing Allowance rates for Universal Credit and Housing Benefit claimants. These changes will benefit all new and existing claimants.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of trends in the proportion of (a) disabled and (b) non-disabled employees who have been furloughed under the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme.
Answered by Jesse Norman
Applications for the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) opened on Monday 20th April. By close 11 May 2020, 935,000 employers had submitted claims to HMRC, representing 7.5m furloughed employments and £10.1bn.
This is a new scheme and HMRC are currently working through the analysis they will be able to provide based on the data available. HMRC will make the timescales for publication and the types of data available in due course.