LONDON (Reuters) – More than a million British workers have been put on temporary leave by their companies, based on applications in the first eight hours that a government wage support scheme has been open, finance minister Rishi Sunak said on Monday.
Finance minister Rishi Sunak said more than 140,000 companies had applied to use the government scheme, which will pay 80% of the wages of staff furloughed due to the coronavirus outbreak, protecting over a million jobs until the end of June.
“As of four o’clock this afternoon over 140,000 firms have applied, and the grants they’ll receive will help pay the wages of more than a million people – a million people who if they hadn’t been furloughed would have been at risk of losing their jobs,” Sunak said at the government’s daily news conference.
(Reporting by Costas Pitas, Paul Sandle and David Milliken, Editing by Kylie MacLellan)
