Rishi’s multi-billion rescue package for self-employed

A MULTI-billion pound rescue package to protect Britain’s five million self-employed workers could be announced as soon as today.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak is preparing the fresh coronavirus economic bailout amid warnings thousands of sole traders will not survive the crisis.

he had announced on Friday that the Government would cover 80 per cent of employers’ wage bills in a bid to stop mass lay-offs. But following criticism that the self-employed were not receiving a similar level of support, the Treasury has spent the weekend drawing up a new package.

Amid mounting pressure, more than 2,000 musicians have today written to the Chancellor warning that the outbreak has resulted in the ‘complete shutdown of our places of work’.

Signatories included musicians in the London Symphony Orchestra, band members in West end musicals such as Mamma Mia! and Strictly Come Dancing vocalist

Lance ellington. The British Chamber of Commerce last night warned that sole traders across the country were seeing their livelihoods ‘vanish in the blink of an eye’.

Dr Adam Marshall, director general of the BCC, said: ‘While we understand the complexity involved, there are five million selfemployed people who need help similar in scale and scope to that put in place for larger firms in recent days. We will work closely with ministers to find a way to deliver support to self-employed people and to ensure that the measures announced for larger businesses make it through quickly to the front line.’

CBI director general Dame Carolyn Fairbairn said the Chancellor’s rescue package last week had saved millions of jobs.

But she contrasted his pledge to provide 80 per cent of employees’ wages – up to £2,500 per month – with the support given to the self-employed, who were told to claim Universal Credit or statutory sick pay at a rate of £94 per week. On Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday show, Dame Carolyn said it was ‘not enough for the self-employed to live on’.

Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show: ‘It is operationally very difficult to create a scheme akin to [the bailout] for the self-employed but we are reviewing this. If there are further steps we need to do, we will take them.’

One of the suggestions is to copy Norway, where the government will pay self-employed workers grants of 80 per cent of their average income over the past three years.

In addition to the workers’ bailout, the airline industry – on the brink of disaster due to grounded flights – may benefit from a separate deal.