THE Scottish Government is seeking urgent clarification from the Treasury after Boris Johnson appeared to confirm that the devolved administrations would have access to furlough cash when they need it, and not just when England is in lockdown.
The Prime Minister’s pledge was mired in confusion. It came in a lengthy session in the Commons where the Tory chief refused several times to answer questions about when Scotland might be able to access the furlough cash.
SNP, Plaid Cymru and LibDem MPs all attempted to prise a response, and every time, Johnson would dodge, only saying that furlough “is a UK-wide scheme and it applies across the whole of the UK”.
In what was almost certainly a choreographed moment, it was only when Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross asked that Johnson seemed to go further. “The furlough scheme is a UK-wide scheme,” the Prime Minister told the Commons. “If other parts of the UK decide to go into measures which require the furlough scheme, then of course it’s available to them, that has to be right. And that applies not just now, but, of course, in the future as well.”
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Pressed by SNP MP Pete Wishart, he added: “The furlough scheme will continue to be available wherever it is needed.”
Ross said the Prime Minister had given a “clear guarantee”.
Scottish Finance Secretary Kate Forbes welcomed Johnson’s announcement, though, she added, it had “followed two days of completely unnecessary confusion which has left thousands of people fearing for their jobs at an already anxious time”.
Forbes continued: “We are seeking urgent clarification from the Treasury as to the exact terms under which the furlough scheme will be available to us. For example, we need to know that it will be at the full 80% level currently available to businesses, that it will be available on the same eligibility criteria as before, and that the enhanced scheme to support the self-employed at 80% rather than 40% of income will also be available to Scotland when it is needed.
“People in Scotland and across the UK are making enormous personal sacrifices to help us reduce the spread of coronavirus. All of us in government have a duty to offer them the support they need, for as long as they need it.”
Earlier, speaking at the daily coronavirus briefing, the First Minister explained why the Scottish Government needed the clarity.
Nicola Sturgeon said without it she was having to choose between placing the country into lockdown now when there’s access to furlough cash – even though Scotland currently has some of the fewest cases in the UK – or risk waiting and then perhaps having to lockdown in a month or two without access to furlough cash.
The First Minister criticised the Tory Government, saying that it wasn’t fair that they only offered the devolved administrations financial support when the “south of England needs to go into a lockdown”.
She said: “I’ve tried throughout the pandemic to be as open about the difficult choices we face and the factors we have to weigh up in making those difficult choices.
“And while there are encouraging signs that the restrictions that have been in place since September were having an impact, the position remained fragile. It’d be wrong to say that we have no concerns about the next few weeks, clearly, that would not be correct, we still face a lot of uncertainty.”
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“That’s why I made clear last week when I set out the levels that would apply initially that we might yet have to go further and that we can’t rule out and shouldn’t rule out a move to level 4 for all or parts of the country.
“While that decision would never be easy, there is no doubt that the availability of a more extensive furlough scheme of the kind the Prime Minister announced on Saturday would make it slightly less difficult because workers would have more of their wages paid.”
Sturgeon said that over the next few days, the government would have to make a decision between taking the “opportunity of more generous financial support to step harder on the brakes now to drive infection rates down faster and more firmly” or taking “more time to assess the situation and so not take decisions too quickly that would involve more restrictions on people”.
She said the potential benefit of the first option “would be suppressing the virus further and faster at a time when financial support is available and, possibly, I don’t want to overstate this, but possibly opening up a bit more breathing space over the Christmas period.”
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