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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps the Government is taking to ensure that businesses do not use funds received though the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme for redundancy payments.

Employees who are dismissed due to redundancy and who satisfy certain qualifying conditions are 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.

As per the latest updates to the guidance for the Coronavirus Job Retention scheme, grants cannot be used to cover redundancy payments.