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Earlier extension to furlough ‘would have saved jobs’

An earlier extension of the furlough scheme would have saved some jobs in the travel sector, according to Travlaw’s head of employment law.

The government insisted the furlough scheme would end in October before giving it a last-minute reprieve amid a second wave of Covid cases.

Speaking at a launch event for the Travel Weekly Insight Annual Report, Travlaw partner Ami Naru said: “Without doubt, furlough has been a lifeline and the scheme in place now is more generous than in September and October.

“But if employers had known the scheme was going to be in place from April for pretty much a full year, they would have been in a position to make more-informed decisions and the number of redundancies would have been less.”

Naru said: “The government chopped and changed what support was going to be there, sometimes at the very last minute, and that had a detrimental impact on the number of redundancies. But without doubt furlough a lifeline and it has prevented some redundancies.”

The government will review the scheme in January and Naru said: “My guess is the contribution from the government will decline [from February] and the contribution from employers increase as it did in September and October when the government was of the view the scheme was on its way out.

“What will happen post-March, I don’t know. The job support scheme was postponed. The government didn’t say it was withdrawn, so I guess something akin to that will come post-March.”

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