Is the Government doing enough?

I’d like to congratulate all of you on the way in which you’ve buckled down to organising yourselves in a very difficult situation, writes cllr Shaz Nawaz, leader of the Labour Party on Peterborough City Council.

To paraphrase, the rules have indeed been for the many, not the few!

To those few of you who have chosen not to abide by the Government guidelines, then again, I appeal to you to think again. Carrying on as usual creates danger not only for yourselves but for everyone else.

However, judging by the low volume of traffic, empty streets and the comical gyrations of people trying to maintain a two metre gap, most of us are doing our best to comply.

The other ‘few’ that I want to single out are the army of NHS workers, at every level, who are daily risking their lives to care for those unfortunate enough to need hospitalisation, (as well as caring for patients who are in hospital for unrelated reasons).

The last few days have seen the deaths of two doctors from COVID-19, very likely linked to caring for infected patients.

When I attended the Remembrance Day services last November, little did I think that ‘laying down one’s life’ would become, in less than six months, an actuality, rather than a distant act of heroism.

So my first question today is whether the Government is really doing enough to support these selfless individuals (together of course with others in the caring professions)? We hear tales every day of a lack of adequate professional protective equipment. Surely the first objective of the Government must be to provide for the care of the afflicted and for the protection of the carers? I don’t doubt the good intentions, but, whatever it takes, we must maximise the

level of protection by whatever means are available.

As always, I offer my sincere and heartfelt thanks to NHS workers (including the many who have come out of retirement) as well as all those who are caring for others and those who have volunteered to help meet the needs of the vulnerable.

Secondly there are one or two rather odd loopholes in the Government’s provision for workers adversely affected by COVID-19 (that is, nearly everybody). Employers now have the option of furlough leave for employees who cannot work from home or for whom there is no work. The Government will reimburse 80% of the employee’s salary (capped at £2,500 per month), leaving it to the employer to decide (in conjunction with the employee) whether or not to pay the remaining 20%. This is a great move (and will cost the country billions), but it does leave quite a large proportion of people vulnerable to those who want to play the system to their advantage.

One of these is those on a zero-hours contract (always the Cinderella where employment law is concerned). True, they are eligible for furlough leave (with the payment based either on the hours they worked in February, or possibly on a 12-week average) - but ONLY if they are furloughed. What if they just aren’t offered any hours?

The companion scheme for payments to the self-employed looks fine. But this only applies to sole traders and those working in partnership. A huge number of relatively small businesses are limited companies and their directors are technically employees, not selfemployed. Their only option is to furlough themselves (in which case they are prohibited from working) and their 80% will be based on what they took in salary (not dividends). For most of them, that won’t be much, because they were on low salaries supported by higher dividends!

So, I’ll give the Government a few merit points for effort but not yet a gold star for achievement!

And to the rest of you, please don’t try to beat the system, it isn’t worth it. Sadly, no system in the world can be fair to all of the people all of the time.