Charlotte Cane

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Manuela Perteghella) on securing the debate and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for making time for it. As we approach the six-year anniversary of the first lockdown, I am sure that many colleagues will agree that the time of face masks, social distancing and self-isolation feels so very long ago. However, for millions of individuals and countless businesses, it has been an even more arduous six years. As we have heard, research now suggests that about 3.8 million UK taxpayers were excluded from any support and did not enjoy the security that so many of the rest of us did. As we reflect on the ongoing fallout of the pandemic, it is vital that we take on lessons learnt, but the matter of groups excluded from financial support during the pandemic is not one we have learnt about only in retrospect. Issues were raised at the time—in real time—and the failure to listen and act is one that any Government must recognise and make efforts to rectify. We all understood why the initial schemes were targeted to support the majority of people—employees and established self-employed people—but we waited in vain for the then Conservative Government to provide support schemes for the other 3.8 million people. One outstanding issue, as we have heard, was the unnecessarily rigid criteria for the self-employed income support scheme. The glaring issue was the exclusion of the recently self-employed, as entitlement required a tax return from the year 2018-19. That, combined with the 50% income rule, which hon. Members have mentioned, prevented many people from getting any help. We have heard too about women who may have kept their businesses ticking over for a few years while they were on a maternity break or caring for someone, who found that their support was based on a low-income year rather than more representative years. Many small businesses were forced to take out bounce back loans. The Government have estimated that many such loans will not be recoverable because many businesses were forced to close. However, those that have clung on are still working to pay the loans off—all while working in an environment of spiralling energy costs and a business rates system that still does not work properly. I visited one such business in my constituency only last week. To manage current costs, the owners have reduced staff and taken on more of the work themselves. They have run through the figures for next year, and the expected rise in business rates plus their covid loan repayments mean that they are considering selling up or closing the business.