Peter Kyle
Main Page: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove)Department Debates - View all Peter Kyle's debates with the HM Treasury
(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Steve Barclay
My hon. Friend has a deep understanding of business from his career prior to coming to the House. He is absolutely right to talk of the personal consequences, the commitment that people who set up and run businesses have made, and the devastating impact of the virus and its consequences. On the tax position, he will know from his time in the House that those are questions for the Budget and for my right hon Friend the Chancellor.
On the support that has been given to businesses, I direct my hon. Friend to the extension of the loans that we have given to help businesses with their cash flow, which recognises that the biggest cost for many businesses is the fixed cost of their property. That includes the up to £3,000 a month grant for those with rateable values above £51,000 and the support to local authorities, as I referenced in my response to my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) a moment ago, for their discretionary support to specific businesses. It is part of that comprehensive package, but he is right to draw attention to the human consequence of those decisions.
Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)
Any additional investment to help the self-employed is welcome, and I do welcome it, but I ask the Chief Secretary to look at the eligibility criteria that he has set. With the furlough scheme, the eligibility criteria have been updated so that businesses that have been registered with a bank account right up to last Friday can apply. For the self-employed, however, the eligibility criteria have not changed at all and will exclude many self-employed people from all the additional investment that is now available. Will he look at that?
Steve Barclay
Such has been the number of times that the matter has been raised in the House and through the campaign, we have looked at it. Some of those issues have not changed—for example, the difficulty of determining what is dividend income as opposed to earned income, as I referred to in my answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood). We took a decision to target those below the £50,000 threshold. Some of those issues have not changed from the previous period.
The hon. Gentleman is right that the furlough allows some of those who were excluded to come within scope, but I draw the House’s attention to the fact that, even within the House, there is a degree of conflict here. The Treasury Committee has said that we should be more willing to bring the cohort of the self-employed into scope, yet the Public Accounts Committee has expressed concern that we need to have much stricter operational controls because of the risks, for example, of fraud. We see that difference even between the two Select Committees in this House. Of the different cohorts within what is known as the ExcludedUK campaign, some of those on furlough will be able to come back into scope, but much of the rationale has not changed. Of course, we will continue to look at it.