Fergus Ewing

In a letter to Nigel Huddleston, minister for sport, tourism and heritage, Mr Ewing seeks greater flexibility, including part-time furlough arrangements to allow tourism businesses to carry on essential care and maintenance and help them prepare for eventual recovery.

Following discussions with the hospitality industry, Mr Ewing also asked if the UK Government plans to support the marine tourism industry, which is particularly important to remote rural and island communities, as the majority of operators do not use business premises and will not benefit from non-domestic rates relief.

The letter reads:

Firstly, I want to say how much I appreciate the constructive and frank discussions we are having on tourism matters, with our counterparts in Wales and Northern Ireland, related to the COVID-19 crisis. I am writing to follow up on a number of issues which have come up in those discussions, most recently our call of 21 April.

There is no doubt that the measures announced by our respective governments are helping to support the tourism and hospitality sector at this unprecedented and tremendously difficult time. Most recently, the announcement by HMRC amending the qualifying date when an employee has to have been on the employer’s payroll, from 28 February to 19 March 2020, is a helpful and positive development which will capture many workers who had been taken on in early March, prior to lockdown, to prepare for the Easter season.

I believe, however, that there may still be an issue over eligibility if the Real Time Information return is not submitted to HMRC at the time the employee is engaged; in practice, many businesses delay this until they process the payroll in the final week of the calendar month and this may have a negative impact on the ability of businesses to obtain support.

There remain significant issues of real concern to the tourism sector here in Scotland which can only be resolved by the UK Government.

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