Scots businesses to gain £360m of support from Sunak rescue package

BUSINESSES in Scotland will benefit from a coronavirus rescue package following a £360million funding boost from the Chancellor.

Rishi Sunak’s Budget included measures to protect companies in England, including a business rates ‘holiday’ for small retail, leisure and hospitality firms – which led to a knock-on £360million for the Scottish Government.

Nicola Sturgeon yesterday gave an ‘assurance’ she would use the money to support businesses, saying she wants to ‘broadly’ replicate the same type of support in Scotland.

But she failed to give a direct commitment to match the Chancellor’s decision to scrap business rates to help protect smaller firms in some sectors.

The Scottish Conservatives welcomed

Miss Sturgeon’s confirmation she would use the £360million to support firms – but said business owners would only believe it when they saw the details.

Stuart Mackinnon, of the Federation of Small Businesses, said: ‘We need to ensure the funding gets to firms in the simplest, least bureaucratic way.’

At First Minister’s Questions yesterday, Scottish Conservative leader Jackson Carlaw said the Chancellor had ‘acted to meet the seriousness of the times with radical rates relief and other measures to support the economy’.

Miss Sturgeon said she would give an ‘undertaking’ that any money ‘that is available for the NHS will go to the NHS’, adding the same also applies to money that is available to support businesses.

Pressed further by Mr Carlaw on whether she would implement ‘complementary’ plans to those of Mr Sunak, she said: ‘Yes, I can give that assurance in general terms.’

Miss Sturgeon added: ‘Broadly speaking, we would want to replicate here in Scotland the types of support that were announced yesterday in the Budget. We might have some differences, depending on the views of businesses and the circumstances that we face here.’