UK: The Job Retention Scheme - What Does It Mean For Your Business? (Video)

On Monday 30 March we hosted a webinar discussing the Government guidance on furloughed workers, and how employers can keep paying their people when the work is drying-up. We talked about how the Job Retention Scheme will function in practice and navigating the tricky issues around holiday and sickness absence.

If you couldn't make it or want to watch it back, here you can access a recording of the webinar.

Transcript

Jonathan Chamberlain: Well good afternoon everyone and welcome to this webinar on the further job retention scheme. What does it mean, how does it work? I am Jonathan Chamberlain and I am a Partner in the Employment, Labour & Equalities team at Gowling WLG and I am joined by my colleague Siobhan Bishop.

Siobhan Bishop: Hello.

Jonathan: And Simon Stephen.

Simon Stephen: Hello.

Jonathan: And since of course we are all working remotely so I cannot tell you what a joy and a relief it is to hear their voices. Now, let me tell you how we are going to proceed for the next 40 minutes.

We are going to go through a number of points which we hope will take about 25 minutes and that will leave plenty of time for questions at the end. We would like as many questions as possible please, I think it is really great if we could all learn from each other whilst we are spending this time together.

Now, how are we going to proceed?

Well, we are going to run through a series of questions. Can we take advantage of this scheme? What does the furlough job retention mean?Can we just tell employees that they are furloughed? What about the money the Government is not reimbursing, do you have to make up the difference? Can we furlough people part time? Can employees on furlough work for anybody else? When do we get our money back from the Government?

And then we are going to go into some of the really tricky issues, the money, what counts towards the money that the Government is going to pay, commission, bonus, pensions, sick pay, and indeed what about sickness generally, I mean can we furlough people who are self-isolating, what happens to people who are off sick now?

And then what about holiday? Can people carry it over? Will they have to take their holiday during this period? Do we want them to take their holiday during this period? What about people on maternity leave, paternity leave, adoption leave and then finally what about if we are planning on outsourcing, planning on MA during this period which we may well be as part of our response to this crisis, do employees on furlough transfer under TUPE?

Right, well let's go right back to the start and kick off please with Siobhan. Who can take advantage of this scheme?

Siobhan: Thank you Jonathan. So the good news is that this is an economy wide intervention scheme. There is no limit on the size of the employer or their revenue, or the fact that they have been asked to close down by the Government. So that is the good news that we need to start with.

It basically applies to all UK employers that have created and started a PAYE payroll scheme on 28 February and have a UK bank account. So any UK organisation that meets that criteria can have access to this new grant scheme and that will include businesses, charities, recruitment agencies, public authorities and even if the company has gone into administration, the administrator can have access to the scheme.

There is perhaps just one word of caution to add here, that the latest guidance states that the scheme is designed to support employers whose operation has been severely affected by Coronavirus and this is something the Chancellor and Prime Minster have previously said on a number of times that the aim of the scheme is to safeguard employees from being made redundant in response to this particular pandemic and therefore the implication might be that they would not have otherwise been made redundant.

However, the guidance does not specifically set that requirement out to show any proof or give any demonstration that there was no other option than to make these employees redundant in light of the Coronavirus pandemic and the employer just needs to self-certify that they have furloughed the employees.

So that word of warning is just to really bear in mind that HMRC can audit post-event so if there are incorrect claims or claims that have been put in for other reasons, there is likely to be a clawback provision in relation to that.

Jonathan: Thanks Siobhan, I think there is two key points coming out of that. One is that this scheme is meant to cushion the impact of the virus, it is not meant as a general subsidy and secondly we are working off the HMRC guidance at the moment. There is not actually any law published on this yet. We are explaining to you what the Government has explained to us. We are still waiting for the regulations that are actually going to implement this. We do not expect they are going to tell us much more than the guidance does already actually, but when it comes to the audit process at the end what those regulations say will be very important.

Now that is who can take advantage of it. Simon what does furlough on job retention actually mean?

Simon: Thank you Jonathan. The furlough arrangement is a brand new concept which has been brought in through this scheme. Some of us may be familiar with it being used in the US and also in military terms where in effect it means a leave of absence.

What we must remember is that this is not lay off and this is not short term leave or short term working, it is in essence a brand new kind of leave which is designed to assist businesses where COVID-19 has had the impact as Siobhan described.

What it does in effect is the requirements of an employment contract or an engagement, to be given work and to do work are effectively suspended and the individual is paid at a reduced rate. The employer can then claim back a certain sum as the grant.

What this means is that an employee cannot do any work for an employer that has put them on furlough leave. They can do training, there are exceptions for that and this may be for example mandatory training which is required by regulator or indeed internal compliance teams, or just to keep themselves up to date. But they cannot do any work for the employer that has furloughed them which means they cannot provide services for or generate revenues for that company.

This does merely show that those who you put on furlough leave really do no work, they really can be left to do no work. As an example we have seen as one of our many queries, is if somebody is needed to come in and check on an alarm in a closed building, then depending on how tight HMRC follow their own guidelines, that may well count as doing a service and therefore you might lose the benefit of furlough leave and therefore not be able to claim the grant back.

It really needs to be given careful consideration when putting someone on furlough leave as to those kind of governance compliance issues. And one key thing to remember as well about what furlough means, is that the individual is still engaged, they are still an employee. All other employment rights, or rights that may apply to them will still continue, as will the contractual ones unless they are dealt with in a written agreement.

This means that the company's employers need to be very mindful of equality laws and also issues such as unfair dismissal, unlawful detriment, redundancy rules etc.

Jonathan: Well I hope you are bringing us to the next really important question here, which is, OK, that is who can furlough, that is what it means, so is it just as simple as telling employees that they are furloughed Siobhan? Can we just do that?

Siobhan: Well it isn't quite that simple, in most cases it is a little more complicated. The first thing to remember is that not all employees can actually be furloughed. So first check whether this particular individual can be. And in respect of this 28 February is the day.

So furloughed employees must have been on the employer's PAYE payroll as of 28 February. Any employees who were hired after that date cannot be furloughed at all and they cannot be claimed for under the job retention scheme.

If an employee was made redundant since 28 February but they are rehired by the employer, they may then be furloughed and employees who are on unpaid leave cannot be furloughed, unless they were placed on that unpaid leave after February 28 and employees who have already agreed reduced hours or reduced pay cannot be furloughed. The employer will have to continue to pay those employees as has already been agreed with them.

So if you are already on unpaid leave there is the possibility there of dealing with it. The real problem is the ones that have been on changed hours or changed wages and there is a bit of a loophole there, in fact Labour have identified this as one of the problems with the protection package and only on Sunday the Shadow Chancellor called on the Government to address this inflexibility in the scheme. So we will have to wait and see if that is addressed at all.

But the second key thing is that the employee must agree and this is where the usual principles of employment law apply. So unless the employee has got a contractual lay off clause which is possible in some industries, particularly manufacturing, but often not the case, the employee will need to agree, and the exact terms of those agreements are the matter of negotiation, consultation and then agreement.

Jonathan: This is a key point because really although those of you on this call are HR practitioners, General Counsel, managers, what we are dealing with here is actually effectively a tax and benefit scheme.

It does not address some of the fundamental employment issues at all, or only in passing, and if we are saying to somebody hi, we're not going to give you any work to do, you are going to remain an employee, but we are only going to pay you 80% of your pay up to a maximum of £2,500 per month, , then that has exactly the same effect as if we did that at any other time, and of course if we did that at any other time to an employee then they could howl it is constructive dismissal, that's unlawful deduction from wages.

So implementing a furlough scheme is going to require a great deal of thought, planning, obviously in a tremendous hurry, and is preferably going to involve the consent of those who we furlough and that is indeed what we are seeing so far.

So, can I just ask actually, while we are here at this point, I'm going to launch a poll which is going to give people a chance to vote, and it is going to say do you already have furloughed employees? And I will let this run briefly. I can see the way this is going, about a quarter of you, and the proportion is now staying relatively stable. About a quarter of you do already have furloughed employees.

So that is interesting this is already coming in and what we are seeing at the moment so far, say compulsory furloughs, but we will come onto that perhaps in a moment.

Now I'm going to stop the polling there, thank you very much.. So Simon, I was asking the question what about the money, that HMG is not reimbursing, do we have to make up the difference?

Simon: So the grant that is available to be reclaimed back is available for the set limits which we will go through in due course and no more. So there will, obviously in a number of situations, be quite a significant gap between what the individual gets under the furlough arrangements and what they would have normally got. It is perfectly open for a company, for an employer, to top up that sum if it so wishes but it will not be able to reclaim that difference back from the Government under the grants.

So it is very much something that will be needed to be factored into the costing and into the overall planning. And I think as well coming back to the point you raised Jonathan about the importance of the furlough agreement, any terms which are going to be topped up or continued, which may not otherwise have been, should be set out clearly in the furlough agreement, to avoid any argument about what is being done and what is not.

I think it is also important to make clear that you will not be able to claim back the salary pay, but you also will not be able to claim back the employer National Insurance Contributions and any pension auto enrolment as well, which is over and above the actual caps of the grant.

Jonathan: Thanks Simon and there is a key point there, which is that the agreements that we put in place here are absolutely crucial because those are the things that the Revenue are going to be scrutinising at the end of this to make sure that we are claiming back only what we are entitled to and that we should not have paid more tax because we contractually owed people the money in any event, even if we did not pay it for them.

So let me try, I will risk running another poll, if you are thinking of furloughing, will your organisation, by the way this is completely anonymous, will your organisation make up salaries to 100%, won't it, or are you not sure?

What do we think? And this is interesting, this is interesting. Obviously as I expected the biggest number of you are not sure, but at the moment no is outnumbering yes by about three to one. And again that is on a sample size of about 50%, so that is interesting. I'll call it a stop there because I think those results are what we would call statistically significant. Good, that's where we got to which I think is a really interesting conclusion.

So, can we furlough people part-time, can we just have them working in the mornings and then coming back in the afternoons, might that work Siobhan?

Siobhan: No that's not possible under the scheme. The employee is either working or not working, so if they are not working at all, as Simon said, they are then eligible to be submitted under the scheme and to have the grant paid in respect of them. This does not mean that part-time employees cannot be furloughed, what it means is that part-time employees can be furloughed as long as they are furloughed for the entirety of their employment time.

Jonathan: OK and can furloughed employees work for anybody else Simon whilst this is going on?

Simon: So, many employees will have more than one job already, or if they are put on furlough leave, may wish to take up another one, for example, work in a supermarket or helping out with deliveries. Just a few, before I kind of fully answer the question, background points.

The guidance as issued has no problem with people doing volunteering work for a company, so whilst we simply cannot work, people can carry on volunteering as long as they are not providing a service and of course they may well avail themselves of the new volunteering scheme that launched by the Government, which is outside of this but they can do those no problem.

It is also possible under the scheme, for an individual to work for a separate entity whilst on furlough fromanother]. What is really important is the arrangement between the individual and their employing company. So as an example, if someone has two jobs they can be put on furlough leave from one company under which they cannot do any work as we have mentioned, but they can continue to work for another company.

Coming back to the salient point that we keep mentioning about the furlough agreement, is that the usual contractual rights etc. that an individual has over who and what they can do during their employment will continue, so if you have a contractual obligation that somebody does not work for another company whilst employed by yourselves, then this will carry on. Often we see clauses in there where somebody cannot do that without written agreement, and these will carry on unless they are amended by the furlough agreement put in place.

Siobhan: The other point worth mentioning is that the minimum period of time than an employee can be furloughed is three weeks and one of the key questions that businesses were keen to understand was whether it might be possible to rotate employees, so there may not be a need to close down the whole business or that part of the business, but there is not enough work for everyone and to perhaps try and introduce an element of fairness between employees, have some who are furloughed for a three week period and then effectively swap or rotate with another group of employees who are currently working but then go on furlough leave. So the guidance does not explicitly say that that is acceptable, but we think it is and that can help address some of the issues around fairness and also practicalities where there is not quite enough work to make redundancies or to put everybody on furlough.

It might not work equally if the same employees are needed for business continuity reasons or dealing with particular customers and clients, it might not work in that case but it is something that employers and businesses have been keen to understand and we think that that will be OK.

Jonathan: So any idea when we might get our money back from the Government?

Siobhan: Yes, well hopefully, is the answer to that. Hopefully this will be by the end of April so to be run through the April's payroll. The Government is of course building an entirely new system to deal with this scheme. Nothing exists at present that can be adapted. So we have not got all the details yet, but they have continually said that the aim is to have this up by the end of April.

Of course employers do not need to wait until the scheme is actually operational to put employees on furlough leave, but that is when we expect and hope that payment will come through and what happens is that there will be a payment made directly into the UK bank account of the employer by BACS payment.

Of course employers might be having cashflow difficulties now or facing critical problems with financing the March payroll and all the Government has done and the guidance is point to alternative sources of financial support that are available in the meantime.

Jonathan: Thanks Siobhan. So, now some of the really tricky questions. The money. Commission, bonus, pensions, sick pay. Simon, what happens to that lot?

Simon: The grant that is able to be claimed is 80% of an individual's salary, or £2,500, so 80% up to £2,500. In terms of looking about looking at what the actual salary is, for salaried employees you are looking at the salary before tax that is to be used, but this I am afraid does not include fees, commissions and bonuses. So these will have to be discounted from any calculation as to what the relevant salary is, which of course, this can make it where individuals are used to having substantial bonuses or if their pay is largely made out of commission, this could make it quite a significant drop and it then becomes almost a commercial decision about whether to top those up.

In terms of what salary you look at, you look at the salary that is in place as at 28 February, or indeed if the salary has been reduced since then, at the time of the furlough if it is a lower rate. So that is for salaried employees.

For people who are on varied pay, obviously the fees, commissions and bonuses rule would apply so they will not be taken into account and in terms of looking at what their salary is, the cap will still apply but if somebody has been in employment or been engaged for 12 months prior to the claim, you look at the higher value of either their same month's earning from the previous year or the average monthly earnings for the 2019 and 2020 tax year.

If they have been employed or engaged for less than a year, you then look at the average monthly earnings since they have started work and there is also another rule for those who have started in February 2020 where you do not have the historic payroll available, you look at the pro rata of the earnings that they have so far claimed.

So that is the very quick run through of what actually constitutes salary and what you are looking at there, benefits etc. are outside of this but they will still continue to run. In terms of employer National Insurance Contributions and pensions, the employer will remain liable for these but they can claim for the value of the employer NICS and the minimum auto enrolment pension contributions that would be made on the amount paid, but that is the amount paid up to the cap only.

So the minimum auto enrolment pensions will apply unless opted out etc. but the rest will in typical lawyer fashion depend on the nature of the scheme and what is in place.

So in order to work out exactly how you are going to do it, you will need to work out the salary that can be claimed, and then work out what the employer NICS and the auto enrolment pensions are to be paid on top of that and then you can make a claim for those salaries and the National Insurance and the auto enrolment pension side of it, but again that is just a minimum payment.

In relation to sick pay we cover this really as part of the next question, but here I just wanted to highlight that those employees who are on furlough leave are unlikely to be able to go onto sick pay because the definition of sick pay, or the fine definition of sick pay, is that they are incapacitated for work through illness. Whereas when somebody is on furlough leave that is clearly not the case.

And then the final point on money which, and I can see from the questions we have had as well, is in relation to the National Minimum Wage and the National Living Wage.

Our view is that during furlough leave then the National Minimum Wage and the National Living Wage will not apply, simply as an individual is not working. The exception to this is that if an individual does training during the course of the furlough leave, and as I explained earlier, an exception to the rule that they cannot do work is that somebody can do training. When somebody is doing training you will need to ensure that they are paid the National Minimum Wage or the National Living Wage for that time they are doing that.

If somebody is on furlough leave after 6 April you are likely to have to consider the new limits but if they are on furlough leave before the new limits come in, then any National Minimum Wage considerations will be done on the current ones, but of course when they return you will have to make sure that the current rules in place are abided by.

Jonathan: What about people who are ill, after all this is a scheme introduced because of illness. What are the arrangements going to be around that?

Siobhan: OK, so we have people who are self-isolating, in line with public health guidance and there are new regulations which mean that they are effectively treated as being sick, and they are entitled to Statutory Sick Pay but they can then be put on furlough leave when that sick leave period ends. Also people who are currently on sick leave now because of Coronavirus should get Statutory Sick Pay and then can be furloughed.

There is a couple of more tricky issues where if someone is currently on sick leave now, but for reasons other than Coronavirus, so perhaps they have already been on long term illness, or it is an independent reason, we think that they can only come back to work and be put on furlough leave once they are genuinely fit for work.

So in the normal course, you would expect the sick leave to end and we cannot bring that period forward so that those individuals would benefit or make a profit essentially out of the Coronavirus pandemic. So they would need to remain on sick pay unless they were genuinely fit to return to work.

Now the guidance only deals with employees who are on sick leave before being put on furlough leave and it does not address the question of employees becoming sick, but I think Simon has covered that. We expect them to stay on furlough leave rather than going on sick leave and of course it does raise the question that if you were sick, and only entitled to Statutory Sick Pay, there would be little incentive to let your employer know that you were sick, you would rather stay on the furlough pay. If it is a contractual right it might be a little bit more complicated.

Jonathan: Right thank you. And what is also complicated, we are getting a lot of questions through on this in the question box, is holiday, carrying over, compulsory holiday, Bank Holidays during any furlough period, Simon do you want to take us through some of the technicalities on that?

Simon: Yes thank you. I have been looking at the questions and I will do my best, I have been trying to multi-task and listen and read some of the questions and I will do my best to cover the ones through there.

Holiday is needless to say a complicated area and we have actually just published a detailed note on this which went out last week. In essence though it is the company's decision as to whether to put someone on furlough, or on holiday leave, so it is all kind of part of the consideration to be done when looking at the potential use of furlough leave and this job retention scheme.

If somebody is on furlough leave then they can take holiday during that furlough. The question only arises as to what are they paid? There is no guidance as yet and it is fair to say we have had a number of internal conversations on this, but our current view is that it is entirely possible that an individual can argue they should be paid at their full normal rate, particularly in relation to contractual holiday, so again this is something that should be actively dealt with in the furlough agreement itself to avoid any arguments or disputes about that.

In terms of carry over, normally under the Working Time Regulations you are not allowed to carry over your statutory holiday and as a reminder there is a difference between holiday which is provided for statutory and there are different levels of that, and what is provided for under the contract of employment, but you normally cannot carry over holiday under the Working Time Regulations unless it is for long term sickness etc. as clarified by case law.

This obviously causes a problem for both employees and organisations so as a result the Government has legislated to allow for up to four weeks' leave to be rolled over for up to two years when the holiday cannot be taken in a particular leave year due to a direct influence of Covid 19 and the impact on the employer, the wider economy and/or society.

And I have used that phrase employer, wider economy or society deliberately because that is what is in legislation in the guidance and what that shows is, is that it is a much wider viewpoint than just simply an employee saying they cannot take their holiday or an employer saying they need someone to work, so it is quite a wide catch all process really.

And what this means is that for companies, you do not need to necessarily worry about what you are going to do with people all taking leave at the same time once lockdown is kind of released, if it ever is, and also for individuals wondering about when they are going to take their holiday and how they are going to take it. So that is a welcome relief.

But then that does link onto the next question which is, and I see this is a common one asked here, which is can we, or can an employer put in place compulsory holidays and may tell people when they can take their holidays? And the short answer to this is yes.

There are provisions in the legislation which allow you to refuse somebody's holiday, if needs be as long as the correct notice periods are applied for which could be relevant for those who have frontline staff, or staff who are in key roles, it is also possible for you to designate time to be taken as holiday, and using manufacturing industries as an example, who have the annual shutdowns etc., you can still do these during the job retention or during this Covid pandemic and while people are on furlough, so you can still do that process.

You will, however, need to follow your usual notice periods, so it will either be in the contract so that is setting out the amount of notice you will tell people before you tell them that they have to take holiday, if there is nothing in the contract then it will be dealt with under the statutory provisions which requires notice to be twice as long as the number of days requested.

Siobhan: I will move onto the next issue which is do employees on furlough leave transfer under TUPE and this is a question we have been asked as well.

So let's start with fundamental principles, are they assigned if they are not even in the workplace? Well, yes, they are almost certainly assigned, they will transfer as normal, they are assigned to that transferring business or the services which are going to be changed even though they are absent from the workplace, because there is an expectation that they will return to the business after those periods of leave, there is likely to be a certain date when they return and there is also case law on similar issues about people being laid off but still being caught up in a transfer.

So that is the first point, but what terms would they transfer under?

So under TUPE transferring employees are treated as always having been employees of the transferee, but the real important question, if somebody TUPE transfers over to a business after 28 February, even though they have continuity before then, can that new employer, can the transferee claim back under the job retention scheme? Can they claim 80% of the salary?

So whilst the employee will transfer under their current terms, which will be the terms that they have agreed when they went onto furlough leave, the logic might be that they therefore would be under the scheme because no one should lose out because of a TUPE transfer. However we must remember that the guidance is very clear that it says in order to qualify for the scheme the individual has to have been employed and on the payroll on the PAYE scheme of that employer as of 28 February and employees who transfer into a business will not be on the payroll on the PAYE scheme of that employer as of 28 February.

So, that may be seen as sensible, from the point of administrating this scheme because HMRC are keen to get this done quickly and there is no obvious way of checking where an employee may have came from before they effectively look and appear to be same as a new recruit as of the date of the transfer.

However equally it may well have been an oversight, it may have been something that just really was not considered and this is a bit of a loophole, and this issue has been raised and it is possible, and we will have to wait and see on this, whether this is addressed in the next guidance and the final version of what we are waiting to see. So it is one to watch out for.

There is also the issue of when the transfer happens because you have to furlough employees for a minimum of three weeks. So if either the transferor does not meet that requirement before the transfer happens, the transferor may not even have been able to benefit from those terms.

Jonathan: OK. Thanks Siobhan.

Now you know how normally when you run a seminar or you have been to an event and the organiser says at the end of the presentation any questions and it is a few minutes before anybody puts a hand up, well before I was just unceremoniously thrown out of the call by Zoom, we had over 106 questions in the Q&A box and we had about 20 coming through the chat.

So, I'm afraid there is just no way we can answer them all.We have extended people's talking time so they could try and pick up the answers to some of those questions as the speakers went along, but I do apologise if we cannot get to your question, we will literally be here all afternoon if we try.

So, I am going to try and pick up now some from the ones that I can still see and they are still coming in, where are we?

Who is going to explain what happens if an employee does not agree to be furloughed and this also ties in with another question, another couple of questions that we have had around do we have to have a selection process if we are doing this compulsorily and I think the answer to the first question is to be found in the answer to the second.

If employees will not consent to going on furlough, then we have to treat it like a redundancy exercise and if we are treating it like a redundancy exercise then that is going to involve consultation, it is going to involve selection, it is going to involve calling and what it is not going to involve clearly in these circumstances is spreading this out over a number of weeks and a point has been made is it actually possible to do the collective consultation requirements in these circumstances and clearly the answer is if the business is likely to go bust as a result then no, special circumstances defence is likely to be available.

We probably can run on a compressed timetable but what we can get away with is going to depend very much on the individual facts.

Other things that we can pick up, I think relatively quickly, what happens to employees who have gone overseas? Well I think if they are not paying UK tax because this is a UK scheme, then you are unlikely to be able to claim back for them. They are going to have to be people who have got a tax code, so that the Revenue can see what has happened. And I think bringing them back simply so they can be furloughed might be problematic because then that means they will be showing up on the payroll after the relevant cut-off date and you will have some persuading the Revenue to say that these should be people that the Revenue should pick up.

Now Siobhan and Simon, my fellow panellists, are there any particular questions that you would like to pick up and answer, ones where preferably we can pick up common themes?

Simon: Well I think one thing I would pick up with Jonathan is that we bye-passed the maternity and other leaves section and we have had a number of questions on that so I will quickly just run through that.

And the essence there is that family friendly leave still does apply and people on maternity leave or other family friendly leave can still be put on furlough leave, so it kind of operates as normal.

Being on furlough leave will not impact their right to statutory pay, those normal rules will still apply. If there are enhanced company maternity leave or other leave pay, then this will continue but they will form part of the wages cost that the employee can claim and I think the final point is that the guidance does not prevent women on maternity leave or indeed other people on other leave from returning to work early and being furloughed but what is best for the individual may well depend on their own circumstances and of course in dealing with anyone under the family friendly leaves you will still need to be mindful of the usual equality laws.

Jonathan: Thank you Simon. Siobhan do you want to, any of your favourite questions that you can quickly give answers to?

Siobhan: So this relates to what happens when the scheme ends which also relates to what if the employer wants to dismiss whilst employees are on furlough leave. So the brief answer is that it is still possible to dismiss employees who are on furlough leave for redundancy if, for example, the business takes an even further dip and you need to do that, it is not precluded just because they are on furlough. Of course you do need to follow all the normal consultation and equalities duties as best you can, it is important even if you are not able to comply with the timescales required in the collective consultation duties that you do as much as possible, so really take what steps are reasonably practical even if you are trying to rely on the special circumstances defence, but once the scheme ends we do not know yet when that will be. At the moment it is for three months and so it would end on 31 May, it may be extended. We have been told and the Chancellor says that there is no cap or limit to the funding under this scheme and whether or not it is extended will depend on the circumstances at the time.

Jonathan: We have an article that was published just this morning, so that is hot of the press that does pick up some of the questions that have been already asked.

Thank you all very much for coming. I am sorry if we did not get to your question, as I say we literally physically could not, there is clearly an awful lot that still needs to be answered and we will be working on updating you as more information becomes available.

Thank you all very much indeed.

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