By Fresh help for self-employed during second lockdown
Government support for the self-employed will be doubled from 40 to 80 per cent during November’s England lockdown, Boris Johnson has announced.
In a statement to the House of Commons this afternoon to outline the new national measures, due to come into force on Thursday, the prime minister told MPs: “The government will continue to do everything possible to support jobs and livelihoods in the next four weeks, as we have throughout.
“We protected almost 10 million jobs and we’re now extending the scheme throughout November.
“We’ve already paid out £13.7 billion to help the self-employed and I can announce today that, for November, we will double our support from 40% to 80% of trading profits.
“The chancellor will also extend the deadline for applications to Covid loan schemes from the end of this month to the end of the next, to ensure small businesses can have access to additional loans if required.”
The lockdown is due to expire on December 2, after which he says the country will return to a regional tiered approach.
The PM said he believed Covid-19 could be defeated by the spring.
He told MPs scientists were “bleak” in their predictions over the short-term but “unanimously optimistic about the medium and the long-term”.
The PM said the “way out” of the pandemic was to get the R rate down and beat the autumn spike by exploiting the medical and technical advances made.
He began by highlighting that the R remains above 1 and that the virus was spreading faster than the government’s reasonable worst case scenario.
He also pointed to projections for hospital capacity and deaths in the coming weeks.
“Faced with these latest figures there is no alternative” but to introduce national measures he said.
