Chancellor Rishi Sunak has unveiled a coronavirus job retention scheme to prevent people being laid off during the pandemic. It is unclear how people on zero hour contracts will receive an income.
The Government has vowed to cover 80% of wages for at-risk workers for at least three months. They say there is ‘no limit’ on the amount of funding available.
To protect jobs, the chancellor announced that the government will step in and help pay wages, for the first time in UK history. It’s called the coronavirus job retention scheme.
Companies and organisations will be able to apply for a grant from HMRC to cover the wages of people who are not working due to coronavirus shutdowns, but who haven’t been laid off.
As the UK death toll rises to 184, more than 65,000 former NHS doctors and nurses are being sent letters asking them to come out of retirement to boost frontline services
Rishi Sunak also announces that he is deferring the next quarter of VAT payments due from businesses.
That means no business will pay VAT from now to June, and they’ll have until the end of the financial year to repay those bills. That should help companies struggling with a cash flow crisis.
Self-employed workers will be allowed to defer self-assessment payments until January 2021 and can claim universal credit at a rate equivalent to statutory sick pay.
