Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment his Department has made of the potential effect of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme on the rate of jobs being replaced by automation.

The objective of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme is to enable employers to keep people in employment. So far, the CJRS has helped 1.2 million employers to pay the wages of 9.9 million jobs across all sectors of the economy.

Analysis published by HMRC shows that 90 per cent of employees that left the CJRS between April and July were still on their original payroll in August, suggesting they remained working for their original employer. The OBR have also estimated that unemployment would have been higher in the second quarter of 2021 in the absence of the CJRS and other measures.

The Government continues to monitor CJRS take-up, with HMRC's latest official statistics producing analysis of claims split by characteristics including employer size, sector of the economy, geography, age and gender.