Rolling coverage of all the latest UK coronavirus developments
- Coronavirus – latest global updates
- Universal credit claims ‘almost impossible’ as 500,000 apply
- Men are much more likely to die from Covid-19. But why?
- UK healthcare workers: the protection they need and what they have
- Read all our coronavirus coverage
More than 1,000 people have contacted MPs to raise concerns about being told to continue travelling into work despite the government’s plea for them to stay at home.
Office and call centre workers, TV engineers, and estate agents are among the workers who have replied to an appeal for information by the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy committee (BEIS).
“From the evidence we’ve received it’s clear that many businesses are still not doing the right thing. This must change now. This is a health emergency – it cannot be business as usual.
“Workplaces, even those deemed essential, should be doing all they can to ensure that their workers are able to work from home or, if they do have to attend work, that they can undertake social distancing.
While we await confirmation of the government’s plan to pay the self-employed whose incomes have collapsed during the virus outbreak, the Royal Society of Arts has run the numbers and thinks the chancellor’s widely trailed strategy is not as effective as it could be.
Rishi Sunak, who has said working out a solution for the self-employed has been “extremely complicated”, is expected to offer the self-employed payments equivalent to 80% of their earnings over the last three years up to £30k. But the RSA thinks a temporary basic income of £1,500 initially to help manage immediate cashflow, followed by a weekly payment of £100 per week for three months would leave more people better off. It says:
For people earning £17,000 – the average earnings for a self-employed person, according to the ONS – they would be better off under the scheme. This would therefore cover people in vulnerable roles like Deliveroo riders and Uber drivers. For people earning more than £17,000, the benefits of this proposal compared to the government programme would taper off progressively.
Our worry is that basing grants on 80% of average earnings over three years, or even one, will throw up too many anomalies given the changeable nature of year-to-year earnings of this segment of the workforce, leaving some with very low incomes short. It may also prove to be too slow and bureaucratic. It will also mean that some who are fit and healthy to work would be discouraged from doing so.
Continue reading…