Chancellor Rishi Sunak being urged to back £5bn plan to save taxpayer footing bill for jobs lost in pandemic
Chancellor Rishi Sunak is being urged to back a £5billion plan to save the taxpayer footing the bill for jobs lost in the pandemic.
Instead, private money would be used to keep people in work.
Firms on the brink of failure would be offered cheap eight-week commercial loans to stay afloat.
Plan: Treasury sources confirmed that Rishi Sunak had studied the proposals but said they were ‘no longer being considered’
The loans would be guaranteed by the workers forgoing their statutory right to eight weeks’ redundancy pay from the Government’s National Insurance Fund.
The plan is to be launched this month with a £5billion fund provided by global investment firm HPS.
David Brown, founder of Hi55 Ventures who devised the scheme, said: ‘The beauty of this is we’re not asking the tax payer to foot the bill.’
If a firm did eventually go under, its workers will have forgone their right to redundancy payments from the NI Fund – having guaranteed the loan.
Backers of the scheme insist it will go ahead with or without Treasury support.
Treasury sources confirmed that Mr Sunak had studied the proposals but said they were ‘no longer being considered’.