I am grateful for that relevant intervention. The point is that we need to do what is safe and compensate those people who are unable to go about their normal business if it is not safe. I am not one of those people who says, “We just follow the science.” A judgment still needs to be made on the basis of the science, but we need to have the guidance up front and early. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, Northern Ireland is opening up on 3 July and perhaps England will open on 4 July, but we need the information on which to base those decisions.
In the Lake District national park—the most populated national park in the country—80% of the working-age population works in tourism and hospitality, an industry that has basically closed down for the past three months. It is not the case in every part of the country, but the tourism in the national parks and in the coastal zones of the UK is largely cyclical. Visitors rely on the feast of the summer to see them through the famine of the winter. Lockdown turned our summer to winter. Even
if businesses are permitted to open in a limited capacity, the restrictions on customers will continue to prevent them from making up all that lost income. If the tourism economy is able to fully reopen only in the autumn, we condemn people to three winters in a row: three winters of making a loss; three winters of financial hardship. As the Government ease the lockdown restrictions, it is entirely sensible for the Chancellor to begin the slow unwinding of the furlough scheme for many businesses. After all, there is light at the end of the tunnel and hope for the future—but not for everyone. We must not fall into the trap of thinking that the ending of the lockdown will mean that business can begin to make profit again; being open for business is no guarantee of having business. A business cannot pay its staff even 10% if it is not making any income to pay them with, and that is going to be the case for a good number of businesses in the tourism and hospitality sector. If the Government insist on no exemptions to the phasing out of the furlough from August, many businesses in Cumbrian towns and villages will be forced to lay off huge swathes of their staff or to fold altogether.
As well as the huge increase in job losses on my patch, 37% of the working population are now on furlough—that is the fourth highest level in the country and the highest by far in the north of England. If we do not recognise that the tourism and hospitality industry is in a unique and precarious position, we will simply end up killing hundreds of otherwise healthy businesses in the autumn, in which case, what would have been the point of the Government’s expenditure so far? The furlough scheme would just become a waiting room for unemployment, and I will not settle for that.