Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy how many fishing and aquaculture businesses have applied to the (a) Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme and (b) Coronavirus Jobs Retention Scheme in England.

As of 22 April, over £2.8bn worth of loans have been issued under the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme across all sectors, to over 16,600 businesses. At this time we cannot provide a breakdown of funding by sector, as we have given lenders a temporary dispensation from uploading their data to the British Business Bank’s system in order to let them focus on issuing new loans. This is a pragmatic step that reflects the urgency of getting loans issued. We are working with the British Business Bank, HM Treasury and lenders on regular and transparent data publication going forward.

Applications for the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) opened on Monday 20^th April. As of Thursday 23^rd April HMRC had received about 512,000 claims with a total value of about £4.5bn. 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.