Business
Covid inquiry hears impact on firms and staff
Ben King,
Simon Browning and
Archie Mitchell,Business reporters
Getty ImagesWorkers and business leaders have told the Covid-19 inquiry about the devastation they faced during the pandemic and the difficulties they faced accessing support.
Business owners described breaking into tears as they were forced either to lay off staff or shut up shop entirely, while employees told how they feared for their jobs.
The comments were included in 8,000 submissions from the public, and come as the third stage of the inquiry focuses on the measures taken to support workers’ incomes and keep businesses afloat when the pandemic struck.
According to the Treasury, £140bn was spent on support for businesses, much of it going to pay people’s wages when they were forced to stay at home.
The inquiry heard how, on his first day as chancellor in 2020, Rishi Sunak was presented with a briefing on the impact of the Covid outbreak on growth and financial stability.
Two months later, the Treasury concluded the economy was “in hibernation”, with the sharpest fall in output for nearly 100 years.
Sunak is one of the people who will appear before the inquiry, and Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey will also give evidence in the coming weeks.
Monday’s session opened with emotional video testimony from business owners and freelancers whose livelihoods were upended when Covid lockdowns started.
In the video, Lowri, an events freelancer, explained how she had become desperate as her income stopped and her freelance work vanished. She fought back tears as she explained she qualified for no support. She had a mortgage and a child at home, with “no savings” for back up.
Last week the report on the second phase of the inquiry, into political decision-making, found the government had done “too little, too late”.
The current module, expected to last until just before Christmas, will examine the unprecedented economic intervention rolled out when the first lockdown was announced in March 2020.
The largest scheme, the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, known as furlough, covered 11.7 million jobs between March 2020 and September 2021, at a cost of £70bn.
It paid a portion of employees’ wages to ensure they still had an income even if they could not go to work, and to keep businesses going so that they could reopen later.
There was also a support scheme for self-employed people, loan schemes for businesses and business rates relief.
Questions were raised over the scale of the financial support, the strength of safeguards against fraud and error, and whether it delayed people taking up new work roles.
In submissions to the inquiry, employees told the inquiry how they were worried of losing their jobs and faced a scramble to pay bills through the pandemic, with some missing out on furlough payments after being made redundant.
However, others said their careers were rescued by the furlough programme, while some business owners said they were saved by government support schemes and spared having to make redundancies.
As part of the submissions, the owner of a small retailer told the inquiry: “One awful day, I had to call 80% of my staff and tell them that we had to make them redundant because there was no job for them anymore.
“And I cried, I didn’t sleep all night, I was so, so, upset. I had people that had worked for me for seven, eight years, that I had to say, ‘I’m so sorry, I literally can’t afford to pay you anymore because we’ve got no business’.”
Describing flaws in the furlough system, one Northern Irish contributor said her husband lost his job in the run-up to the scheme coming to an end. “It then got extended, but he’d already been let go,” she said.
The Eat Out to Help Out scheme, which was introduced by Sunak, split opinion among bosses.
“When we reopened, it helped to get people back into the pub and it helped us increase our profits,” the finance director of a large English food and drinks firm said.
But an operations manager at a travel and hospitality firm in Wales said: “When we look back, it probably wasn’t the right thing to do, given where we were with the pandemic.”
The Covid Inquiry, chaired by Baroness Hallett, is expected to look at 10 areas in total, and provide lessons for managing future pandemics.
This phase of the inquiry will also look at the additional funding provided for public services such as the railways to keep them running during lockdowns, and support for the voluntary and community sector.
It will examine decisions on benefits, sick pay and support for vulnerable people.
Also appearing before the inquiry are:
- Former Treasury officials James Benford and Dan York-Smith
- Representatives of the charities Child Poverty Action Group, Long Covid Support and Disability UK
- Former Downing Street special adviser Ben Warner
- Former director general for analysis of the Covid-19 Taskforce, Robert Harrison.
Last week, Sunak told the BBC the government and scientific community were “operating in a highly uncertain environment”.
“I think we do need to view the decisions taken through that lens.
“But it’s important that lessons [are] learned so that we can be better prepared if there’s ever another pandemic.”
One of Britain’s most prolific rail fare dodgers could face jail after admitting dozens of travel offences.
Charles Brohiri, 29, pleaded guilty to travelling without buying a ticket a total of 112 times over a two-year period, Westminster Magistrates’ Court heard.
He could be ordered to pay more than £18,000 in unpaid fares and legal costs, the court was told.
He will be sentenced next month.
District Judge Nina Tempia warned Brohiri “could face a custodial sentence because of the number of offences he has committed”.
He pleaded guilty to 76 offences on Thursday.
It came after he was convicted in his absence of 36 charges at a previous hearing.
During Thursday’s hearing, Judge Tempia dismissed a bid by Brohiri’s lawyers to have the 36 convictions overturned.
They had argued the prosecutions were unlawful because they had not been brought by a qualified legal professional.
But Judge Tempia rejected the argument, saying there had been “no abuse of this court’s process”.
JSW Jetour T2 Launch: JSW Motors Limited, the passenger vehicle arm of the JSW Group, is reportedly preparing to enter the Indian car market this year. It has partnered with Jetour, a China-based automotive brand owned by Chery Automobile, and the Jetour T2 SUV could be the company’s first product, according to the reports.
Media reports suggest that the launch will happen independently and not under the JSW MG Motor India joint venture. The SUV will wear a JSW badge and name, instead of the Jetour branding. The upcoming SUV will be assembled at JSW’s upcoming greenfield manufacturing facility in Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar, Maharashtra.
According to the reports, the company plans to have the vehicle on sale by the third quarter of this year. With this move, JSW aims to establish itself as a standalone carmaker in India.
Expected Powertrain
The SUV is likely to arrive with a 1.5-litre plug-in hybrid setup. Internationally, this hybrid powertrain is offered with both front-wheel drive and all-wheel drive options. It is still unclear which version will be introduced in India.
Design
In terms of design, the T2 is a large and rugged-looking SUV. It has a boxy and upright stance, similar to vehicles like the Land Rover Defender. Despite its tough appearance, it uses a monocoque chassis instead of a ladder-frame construction.
Size
The SUV measures around 4.7 metres in length and nearly 2 metres in width. This makes it larger than the Tata Safari, even though it is a five-seater. A longer 7-seat version is also sold in some markets.
Price
Pricing details for India are yet to be announced. For reference, the front-wheel-drive five-seat T2 i-DM is priced at AED 1,44,000 (around Rs 35 lakh) in the UAE.
Jetour
Jetour is a brand owned by Chinese automaker Chery. Launched in 2018, it focuses mainly on SUVs and is present in markets across China, the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America.
John Swinney has been pressed over whether this week’s Scottish Budget gives some workers the “smallest tax cut in history” – with Tory leader Russell Findlay branding the reduction “miserly” and “insulting”.
The Scottish Conservative leader challenged the First Minister after Tuesday’s Holyrood Budget effectively cut taxes for lower earners, by increasing the threshold for the basic and intermediate bands of income tax.
But Mr Findlay said that would leave workers at most £31.75 a year better off – saying this amounts to a saving of just £61p a week
“That wouldn’t even buy you a bag of peanuts,” the Scottish Tory leader said.
“John Swinney’s Budget might even have broken a world record, because a Scottish Government tax adviser says it ‘maybe the smallest tax cut in history’.”
Raising the “miserly cut” at First Minister’s Questions in the Scottish Parliament, Mr Findlay demanded to know if the SNP leader believed his “insulting tax cut will actually help Scotland’s struggling households”.
The attack came as the Tory accused the SNP government of increasing taxes on higher earners, with its freeze on higher income tax thresholds, which will pull more Scots into these brackets.
This is needed to pay for the “SNP’s out of control, unaffordable benefits bill”, the Conservative added.
Mr Findlay said: “The Scottish Conservatives will not back and cannot back a Budget that does nothing to help Scotland’s workers and businesses.
“It hammers people with higher taxes to fund a bloated benefits system.”
Hitting out at Labour – whose leader Anas Sarwar has already declared they will not block the government’s Budget – Mr Findlay said: “It is absolutely mind-blowing that Labour and other so-called opposition parties will let this SNP boorach of a budget pass.
“Don’t the people of Scotland deserve lower taxes, fairer benefits and a government focused on economic growth?”
Mr Swinney said the Budget “delivers on the priorities of the people of Scotland” by “strengthening our National Health Service and supporting people and businesses with the challenges of the cost of living”.
He insisted income tax decisions in the Budget would mean that in 2026-27 “55% of Scottish taxpayers are now expected to pay less income tax than if they lived in England”.
The First Minister went on to say that showed “the people of Scotland have a Government that is on their side”.
Referring to polls putting his party on course to win the Holyrood elections in May, the SNP leader added that “all the current indications show the people of Scotland want to have this Government here for the long term”.
Benefits funding is “keeping children out of poverty”, he told MSPs, adding the Budget contained a “range of measures” that would build on existing support.
The First Minister said: “What that is a demonstration of is a Government that is on the side of the people of Scotland and I am proud of the measures we set out in the Budget on Tuesday.”
Meanwhile he said the Tories wanted to make tax cuts that would cost £1 billion, with “not a scrap of detail about how that would be delivered”.
With the weekly leaders’ question time clash coming less than 48 hours after the draft 2026-27 Budget was unveiled, the First Minister also faced questions from Scottish Labour’s Anas Sarwar, who insisted that the proposals “lacks ambition for Scotland”.
Pressing his SNP rival, the Scottish Labour leader said: “While he brags about his £6 a year tax cut for the lowest paid, one million Scots including nurses, teachers and police officers face being forced to pay more.
“Even his own tax adviser says this is a political stunt. So why does John Swinney believe that someone earning £33,500 has the broadest shoulders and therefore should pay more tax in Scotland?”
Mr Swinney, however, said that many public sector workers would be better off in Scotland.
He told the Scottish Labour leader: “A band six nurse at the bottom of the scale will take home an additional £1,994 after tax compared to the same band in England.
“A qualified teacher at the bottom of the band will take home £6,365 more after tax in Scotland than the equivalent in England. There are the facts for Mr Sarwar.”
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