Chancellor Rishi Sunak has today laid out his plan to end the coronavirus job retention scheme.<\/p>\n
He has launched a flexible furlough scheme, beginning on July 1, which will enable employers to pay staff for the days they work and claim on the furlough scheme for the other days.<\/p>\n
He has also revealed the details of how the scheme will taper from August, with a lower contribution from employers than had been expected.<\/p>\n
Sunak said: “Today, a new national collective effort begins to reopen our country and kick-start our economy”<\/p>\n
The Treasury will continue to provide 80% support of wages, up to \u00a32,500 a month, in August. However employers will have to pay the national insurance and pension contributions.<\/p>\n
In September the taxpayer support will fall to 70%, then to 60% in October, which is scheduled to be the final month of the scheme.<\/p>\n
By that point the furlough scheme will have supported the wages of millions of people for up to eight months.<\/p>\n
The coronavirus job retention scheme was designed to prevent millions of job losses and at the very least appears to have delayed them.<\/p>\n
However the claimant count still increased by 69% in April, up to 2.1m people. Earlier this month the Bank of England estimated that unemployment could rise to 9% in the months ahead.<\/p>\n
Speaking at the Government’s daily coronavirus briefing, Sunak also provided more support for self-employed people. He announced a second scheme that will open in August and provide a cash payment equivalent to 70% of average profits for a three-month period, up to a total of \u00a36,570.<\/p>\n
The furlough scheme that was announced on March 20 is costing \u00a315bn a month with the Government now absorbing the cost of paying 8.4m people.<\/p>\n
In addition, 2.3m self-employed workers have made claims totalling \u00a36.8bn under the self-employed income support scheme, which pays 80% of average profit.<\/p>\n
The main scheme for employees covered the smaller amount of 80% of an individual\u2019s wages or \u00a32,500 a month. It was originally for three months to May, and was then extended twice, to the end of July.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rishi Sunak launches flexible furloughing and more support for self-employed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":2060775,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"coauthors":[81],"class_list":["post-2060774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-featured-story"],"yoast_head":"\n