Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of backdating the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme to include March and April 2020.
The Self-Employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS) has been, and continues to be, one of the most generous self-employed COVID-19 support schemes in the world.
The SEISS is not intended to provide a month-by-month replacement of income. Due to the volatility of self-employed income and the lack of granular data that HMRC hold on self-employed trading profits, precise mapping of income replacement month by month is not possible. Instead, the SEISS provides a lump sum payment to support eligible self-employed individuals whose businesses have been affected by coronavirus.