Asked by: Wes Streeting (Labour - Ilford North)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what estimate his Department has made of the amount fraudulently acquired from the Bounce Back Loan Scheme.
Answered by Paul Scully
As part of the Bounce Back Loan Scheme application process lenders undertake fraud checks, including Know Your Customer and Anti Money Laundering checks as required. In addition, the application form is clear – any individual who knowingly provides false information is at risk of criminal prosecution. We are working across Departments, and with lenders and law enforcement agencies, to tackle fraudulent abuse of the scheme.
Further details of how we expect the Bounce Back Loan Scheme to perform are set out in our accounts for 2019-20, a copy of which has been placed in the Libraries of the House. At this early stage, such estimates are naturally highly uncertain as reflected in the explanatory notes of the Accounts.
Asked by: Wes Streeting (Labour - Ilford North)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with reference to paragraph 2.47 of the Plan for Jobs, published July 2020, how much funding he has allocated to the Construction Talent Retention Scheme.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
The Construction Talent Retention Scheme will support the redeployment of staff that are at risk of redundancy across the construction sector, while also enabling temporary employee loans between businesses. The Scheme will give displaced workers from other sectors a route to find new employment in construction.
This not-for-profit Scheme will be funded by the Department until the end of the current financial year, with £1.164 million having been secured. The construction industry will provide funding to support the Scheme post-March 2021.
Asked by: Wes Streeting (Labour - Ilford North)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with reference to paragraph 2.54 of the July 2020 Plan for Jobs CP 261, what estimate he has made of the number of homes that will benefit from the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund.
Answered by Kwasi Kwarteng
The Summer Economic Update announced £50m to demonstrate innovative approaches to retrofitting social housing at scale, accelerating the delivery of the Social Housing Decarbonisation. This will mean warmer and more energy efficient homes and could reduce annual energy bills by hundreds of pounds for some of the poorest households, as well as lowering carbon emissions. The Programme will be UK wide and will upgrade thousands of poor energy performing social homes, with high levels of energy efficiency (e.g. floor / wall insulation) and low carbon heating (where appropriate).
Asked by: Wes Streeting (Labour - Ilford North)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, when he plans to open the Green Homes Grant for applications.
Answered by Kwasi Kwarteng
In his Summer Economic Update, my Rt. Hon. Friend Mr Chancellor of the Excheqer announced a £2bn Green Home Grant scheme that will support homeowners and landlords in England to improve the energy efficiency of their properties, reducing energy bills and carbon emissions, and supporting a green economic recovery.
The funding will be spent on paying for accredited tradespeople to install a range of measures, for example insulation, to improve the energy performance of their homes. Further detail on the range of measures will be announced in the coming days, before the full launch.
Asked by: Wes Streeting (Labour - Ilford North)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether the conditions attached to the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme prevent companies from (a) treating the period during which staff are furloughed as a notice period prior to redundancy and (b) substituting pay for furloughed staff as redundancy pay; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Paul Scully
An individual’s pay during their redundancy notice period is based on their rights under their contract of employment and the statutory right to notice pay.
Employees who are dismissed due to redundancy and who satisfy certain qualifying conditions are also 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.
While individual’s redundancy rights will depend on their contractual terms and statutory protections, the Coronavirus Job Retention scheme does not prevent an individual who is using the scheme from being placed on redundancy notice. During this difficult period, we urge employers to exercise discretion and not use the Job Retention Scheme to make someone redundant on less favourable terms than they would otherwise have received.
Asked by: Wes Streeting (Labour - Ilford North)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he is taking to penalise (a) businesses and (b) individuals engaged in (i) price gouging and (ii) profiteering during the covid-19 pandemic.
Answered by Paul Scully
The Government is clear that excessive price increases exploiting the covid-19 outbreak are unacceptable. We are speaking with retailers daily and the Competition and Markets Authority has established a taskforce to tackle the issue. It has approached traders already to stop excessive price increases. Consumers and businesses should report any issues directly to the taskforce online. The Government is monitoring this situation closely and will take further action if it is necessary.