Chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced a scheme to support the self-employed with a taxable grant worth "80 per cent of average monthly profits over the last three years" that is capped at £2,500 a month.
The Income Support Scheme, as Mr Sunak dubbed it, is open for at least three months, and open to anyone with trading profits of up to £50,000. He said he wanted to make sure that "only the genuinely self-employed profit" and that the scheme is only open to people who are "majority self-employed" as a result, meaning that to be eligible, individuals will have had to file a tax return in 2019.
With that said, Mr Sunak did move the filing deadline for 2019 tax returns forward to four weeks from today, and reassured that self-employed people can also access Coronavirus Business Interruption Loans, Universal Credit and defer income tax payments until the end of January 2021.
He said the scheme was unlike anything any country had announced, and "one of the most generous in the world". Mr Sunak said it had been "difficult" to set up, but that the end product was "deliverable" and "fair", and would be accessible "no later than the beginning of June".
Before moving to questions, he said the last ten days had shaken "country and economy like never before" and that the government had "mobilised the full power and resources of the British state" in the "most significant economic intervention" in the country's history.
The chancellor also reiterated the need for people in the UK to "stay home, protect the NHS and save lives". He also cited the success of the Job Retention Scheme with businesses like Pret, Timpsons and Brewdog, and said further details would be published on the scheme later this evening.
The death toll in the UK currently stands at 475, with confirmed cases approaching 10,000. Chrs Hopson of NHS Providers, a representative group for NHS hospitals across the country, has said that hospitals in London are facing a "continuous tsunami" that is "unprecedented".
Elsewhere in Europe, the death toll in Spain has passed 4,000 with a surge of 655 today. Across the Atlantic, the $2 trillion stimulus bill has been followed by the revelation that more than three million Americans filed job loss welfare claims last week alone.
Following a virtual G20 Leaders' Summit, constituent countries have announced that they will be "injecting" more than $5 trillion into the global economy to "counteract the social, economic and fiscal impacts of the pandemic".
The next Leaders Council update will follow tomorrow morning.
