Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment his Department has made of the effect on unemployment of the ending of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme in (a) St Helens North, (b) Liverpool City Region and (c) the North West.

The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) has supported 13,200 employments in St Helens North, 64,900 employments in the local authority of Liverpool and 1,035,600 employments in the North West region of England.

Many of these employments will have already returned to work. In the North West region of England, as of 31 July, the number of employments furloughed had fallen to 453,700.

The Government is adapting its response to the changing context, evolving as restrictions have changed. Today the Government has published its Winter Economy Plan, a targeted package of measures to support jobs and business through the winter months. As part of that Plan, the Job Support Scheme will support viable businesses who are facing lower demand due to COVID-19 to keep their employees in work and attached to the workforce. This is in addition to the targeted Plan for Jobs, which includes a Job Retention Bonus to encourage firms to keep on furloughed workers, providing £1.2 billion to significantly expand and enhance work search support, as well as additional support to people to build the skills they need to get into work, and the new £2 billion Kickstart Scheme, creating hundreds of thousands of new, fully subsidised jobs for young people.