Extracts from PMQs: Self-employed - Mar 25

Wednesday, 25 March 2020 15:53

The Prime Minister:...I know that there are concerns about the self-employed, but he will be hearing more in the next couple of days from my right hon. Friend the Chancellor... Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con): Q2. I thank my right hon. Friend for his leadership and the leadership of his Cabinet at this incredibly difficult time and for the announced package of measures that will support millions of people and protect them from financial hardship. As he has just said, the Government’s...Request free trial

The Prime Minister:...I know that there are concerns about the self-employed, but he will be hearing more in the next couple of days from my right hon. Friend the Chancellor...

Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con): Q2. I thank my right hon. Friend for his leadership and the leadership of his Cabinet at this incredibly difficult time and for the announced package of measures that will support millions of people and protect them from financial hardship. As he has just said, the Government’s advice is clear: stay home to support the NHS and to protect lives. Will he help more people to make the right decision by giving an absolute assurance to the 5,000 self-employedpeople in Mansfield that he is seriously considering taking measures that will help them to do that? [901750]

The Prime Minister: I thank my hon. Friend very much for raising that matter. He is entirely right. As the right hon. Gentleman, the Leader of the Opposition, has just said, that is uppermost in people’s minds. We have produced a quite incredible package to support the businesses and the workforce of this country. We do need to ensure that we protect the self-employed as well, and he will be hearing more about that in the next couple of days.

Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP):...The Prime Minister said that the UK is putting its arms around all our workers. I hope that that will become the case because, as of today, it is not. This morning, the Resolution Foundation estimated that one in three people in self-employment—a total of 1.7 million workers—are now at risk of losing their income. In Scotland, that means that 320,000 self-employed people are deeply concerned about their jobs and the families they support. Last Friday, the Prime Minister and his Chancellor promised the self-employed that help was coming. Only yesterday, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury told them,

“we have not forgotten you—help is coming.”—[Official Report, 24 March 2020; Vol. 674, c. 207.]

These are the same promises that have been made for weeks now, yet they, and we, are still waiting. Can the Prime Minister explain why a package of support for the self-employed was not put in place before we announced the lockdown?

The Prime Minister: As the right hon. Gentleman will understand, we have done a huge amount already to strengthen the safety net for everybody in this country—not just those who are currently in employment—with a package so that they get 80% of their earnings up to £2,500 per month. This country has never done anything on that scale before. We have increased universal credit by £1,000 a year, as he knows. We have deferred income tax self-assessments for the self-employed until July, and are deferring VAT until the next quarter, as he knows. There is also access to Government-financed loans. But there are particular complexities of the self-employed that do need to be addressed; they are not all in the same position. All I can say is that we are working as fast as we possibly can to get the appropriate package of support for everybody in this country. That is what we are going to do, and we will get through this together.

Ian Blackford: The Prime Minister knows that we want to work with him on this, but there is frustration because we have gone into lockdown and workers are without income. This is an emergency. The truth is that the health and economic costs of this virus are deepening by the day. People deserve strong leadership, financial support and straight answers. As we stand here, these people are losing their incomes. Telling them to wait another day simply is not good enough.

In Norway and Denmark, wage support schemes have already been extended to cover the incomes of the self-employed. In Germany, there is a €50 billion programme to ensure that the self-employed do not go bankrupt. In Ireland, the self-employed are eligible for a special pandemic payment of €350 a week. The Scottish Government have written to the Chancellor, asking him to expand the job retention scheme that he announced last week to include the self-employed. Will the Prime Minister confirm that, when the Chancellor eventually does announce measures, there will be parity and equality of support between the already announced job retention scheme and the new scheme for the self-employed? They must not be left behind, Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman is making a very important point. I totally share his desire to get parity of support. I remind him that we have extended mortgage holidays, and are giving all sorts of help and interest-free loans to everybody across the whole country. There are particular difficulties with those who are not on PAYE schemes, as I think the whole House understands. We are bringing forward a package to ensure that everybody gets the support they need. That is the way to get this country through this. But, if I may say so, the better we tackle the epidemic now—the more vigorously we are able to suppress the disease now—the faster we will come through it, and that means—[Interruption.] Yes, it certainly means testing, but it also means staying at home, protecting the NHS and thereby saving lives.

Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD): When all of this is over, I think the Prime Minister will genuinely have earned himself a proper break on a paradise island, and in that regard I commend to him the paradise islands of Orkney and Shetland, where we have a fantastic tourism offer that has built up over many decades, but which has at its heart tour guides, craft businesses and small food and drink businesses, who are overwhelmingly self-employed. Will the Prime Minister give an assurance today to those self-employedpeople that, when the offer of help comes, they will not be in any worse a position that they would be if they were in employment?

The Prime Minister: I cannot in all candour promise the House that we will be able to get through this crisis without any kind of hardship at all, but I can tell the right hon. Gentleman—he and I have talked face to face about the issue he raises—that we will do whatever we can to support the self-employed, just as we are putting our arms around every single employed person in this country. I well understand the point he makes. As for his generous invitation, he should be careful what he wishes for.

Jeremy Corbyn:...Construction sites are still operating and still working on non-emergency work, despite the new rules. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said yesterday that sites will continue to stay open. We heard this morning on the radio a call from a self-employed construction worker who said that he had contracted coronavirus and was suffering from it—he knew he had got it—but he had no option other than to get on the London tube and go on to a site to work, putting himself at greater risk and putting all other passengers and all other workers on that site at risk. Why was he doing it? Because his site had not been closed down, and he had no other source of income to feed his family, so he is going to work, putting all of us more at risk as a result. Can the Prime Minister be absolutely clear and give unequivocal guidance now that non-emergency construction work should stop now?

The Prime Minister: Everybody should work at home unless they must go to work—unless they have no alternative and they cannot do that work from home. If a construction company is continuing with work, clearly it should do so in accordance with the guidance of Public Health England, and it has a duty of care to its employees. But overwhelmingly, what we are saying to the people of this country is that, unless you need to leave the house to take exercise, for medical reasons or to buy essential supplies, you should stay at home, protect the NHS and save lives.

Jeremy Corbyn: Obviously people should stay at home and protect others, but if they have no other source of income, then these very difficult, very personal choices are going to be made, and we are all put at greater risk as a result of it. The self-employed are having to choose whether they go to work or stay at home and face losing their entire livelihood, relying instead on an overstretched welfare system, which could pay as little as £94 per week. One self-employed person said that they need to pay for baby food, rent, council tax and insurance for the car they use for work, being “faced with a decision to feed your family and pay your bills, or stay at home and not get paid”. Why has it taken the Prime Minister so long to guarantee income for all self-employed workers? There are millions of them—our economy has changed.

The Prime Minister: We are making it absolutely clear to everybody in this country that they should stay at home and save lives, but when it comes to the self-employed and the particular pressures that the right hon. Gentleman raises, as I think I have now said several times in this Chamber in answer to other hon. Members, we are shortly bringing forward a package. I think that he would recognise that the steps that the Government have taken to provide support for workers, for employees in this country, are quite exceptional and unprecedented, and they were warmly welcomed, I may say, by the trade unions themselves.

Jeremy Corbyn: I am asking questions about the self-employed, those on zero-hours contracts and those with no recourse to public funds, who have no support. They are in a very difficult situation, and the Prime Minister should understand that many of our constituents—constituents of every Member of this House—lead a hand-to-mouth existence. A few days’ pay lost is catastrophic for them.

The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman is perfectly right, and that is why we have increased the funding for universal credit so that it goes up by £1,000 a year. That will benefit 4 million of the most vulnerable households in the country. Overall, we are putting another £7 billion into the welfare system altogether. And, as I say, we will be bringing forward a package for the self-employed. What we are not doing—and this is fully in accordance with the scientific and medical advice—is closing down the whole UK economy, and he will understand the reasons for that.

Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab): We have already heard about the huge increase in applications for universal credit, and whatever measures the Chancellor comes forward with to help the self-employed will take time to implement. What is the Government’s plan to help people who have no job, no income and no savings, in circumstances where they do not have any money at all to buy food? What will the Government do to make sure that no family goes hungry?

The Prime Minister: We have already increased universal credit, but what we are doing immediately to help to get cash to the poorest and neediest is to give an immediate grant of £500 million to local councils, and there will be more to come.

Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con): Like many colleagues, I represent a constituency that has many self-employed people. Farming, food and food production is very much made up of self-employed businesses. Can we be assured that bureaucracy and the difficulty of setting up a system will not stop help getting to the self-employed? It is essential that we cut through the bureaucracy and make it work.

The Prime Minister: That is indeed the issue. The difficulty is not devising the schemes—we can devise the schemes—but getting the cash to the people who need it in a timely way. Anybody who has worked on any of these projects will know that that is the real issue.

Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con): Trying to summarise an MP’s inbox right now is not easy, but mine includes “I’m self-employed, please help us,” and, “Online delivery slots—which ones would they be?” I trust that the Prime Minister will deliver on the first, and we have covered it a lot today, but on the latter, given the demand, what can he realistically do?

The Prime Minister: We have changed the regulations so that supermarkets have a lot more freedom in their delivery hours, and obviously one of the things we want to do is ensure that we support people to help in what is at the moment an expanding sector of the employment market. We do not want to put up any barriers to online delivery at all.