Written evidence submitted by a member of the public (MRS0103)

The government financial help plan for the self-employed is a great start but not nearly adequate enough. My partner and I are both actors, and as such we are unable to work at all at the moment, and potentially for the rest of the year if film and television productions don’t resume as normal. As such, we will need to rely on the 80% being offered to help us after June 2020.

However, I was on maternity leave for some of the 3 years that they will use to determine my wage. This means that I’ll be on a reduced salary even though I earned significantly more in those other years (and trust me, maternity pay is the worst in Europe. We don’t even receive enough to cover my share of the rent).

Furthermore my partner has a company set up so he earned minimal amounts during the year, and was only paid in dividends. Now the government don’t have anything in place for those with companies and he’s looking to receive no money at all. This will mean that as a family we will have to survive on one salary that will also be impacted by my loss of income for the time I was also on maternity leave.

From a government who didn’t put the right measures into place quickly enough to stop the spread of Covid-19, I think that we deserve more. We even took our child out of nursery a week and a half earlier than the official lockdown happened because we were concerned for the safety of our family - an unfortunate choice that turned out to be the safest thing to do.

If you can’t provide the safety that we needed early on to ensure the spread didn’t become as bad as it has with 10s and 1000’s dying, then at least make sure that you help us to be able to feed our family and pay our bills for the foreseeable future.

April 2020