AQW 11476/17-22

Mr Stewart Dickson
Alliance Party
East Antrim

Tabled Date: 03/12/2020
Answered On Date: 22/12/2020
Priority Written: Yes

Question:
To ask the Minister for the Economy whether she will amend the criteria for the Newly Self-Employed Support Scheme to ensure that those that became self-employed from September 2019 to March 2020 are included in the scheme.

Answer:

The UK Government’s Self-Employed Income Support Scheme excluded those who started trading in 2019/20 as these individuals would not have been able to provide HMRC with the data needed to properly guard against the risk of fraud. The Newly Self-Employed Support Scheme (NSESS) is targeted at this population and applies broadly the same methodology as the SEISS.

I appreciate there remains self-employed individuals impacted by the limits on the NSESS and SEISS. In particular, I am aware of these impacts on those who became self-employed in 2018/19 that were excluded from the SEISS or received limited support due to the policy design of the scheme.

I fully appreciate that this is frustrating for those individuals. However, the scheme was designed to fit within the £10 million funding envelope approved by the Executive. The criteria for the scheme was approved by the Executive. Extending eligibility criteria to try and redress issues around existing national policy decisions has wide ranging implications - not least on affordability - and, therefore, changing the criteria for the scheme is a decision for the Executive.