The Week at Fashion Roundtable: Lobbying and the launch of the British Textiles Consortium
By Tamara Cincik, Founder and CEO of Fashion Roundtable
As we adjust to the new normal, I am juggling working from home (In a daily rotation of gym gear), with home-schooling, self-isolation and all the on-going uncertainty. This pandemic is personal, financial, existential and environmental. Like all of you, I have never known a time like it: from worrying for those within our community who are in financial freefall, which is many of us, to supporting charities Refuge, The Trussell Trust and FareShare UK, Fashion Roundtable has never been busier.
Behind the scenes we have been busy lobbying for the all of the fashion and textiles industry across a number of different issues and across several different Whitehall departments. Last week saw the launch of the British Textiles Consortium (BTC) headed by Kate Hills from Make It British. We are working with Kate as part of BTC working on public affairs and policy to support UK end-to-end PPE procurement for our NHS heroes; as well as working with the Emergency Designer Network headed by designers Phoebe English, Bethany Williams and Holly Fulton for more localised solutions. Sign off from the government cannot come quickly enough and I am keen to see UK-made PPE production taken up in huge numbers very soon. Not only is it ethical, it is clearly a more long-term sustainable solution— which recalls Utility Wear from WW2, when British designers created clothes at affordable prices using the minimum in rationing coupons. I have seen the best in the UK fashion and textiles industry coming together over the last month: we have the skills, the solutions and the workforce and we want to do all that we can to help those on the healthcare frontline against this awful virus.
As well as working on UK end-to-end procurement, Fashion Roundtable have been putting forward the concerns of our business owners, our self employed and freelancers. I received this response letter (below) from Alok Sharma's team and while we know this helps some people, we are all too aware that it does not help everyone. We are consistently updating the government on all of these concerns as well as working with partners, such as the Creative Industries Federation, IPSE, GMB and BECTU in highlighting your concerns and using evidence from our snap surveys, your emails and our weekly Friday 2pm webinars. I am seeking financial parity for all workers, not just those on PAYE.
Our extensive list of policy resources provides weekly updates on all the updated information from City Hall, Whitehall and The UK Government and alongside our weekly webinars aim to support each of you during this difficult time. If you would like to register for this week's webinar, please email sarah.squires@fashionroundtable.co.uk. You can also see our recent press release which details everything we’ve been up to, here.
I launched Fashion Roundtable when I saw firsthand that our sector needed to be better understood by politicians. We are the highest earning component of the creative industries and we need to be valued: not only for our financial, but also our cultural currency. This is more vital than ever, as we contend with the short-term economic and social impacts, with so many of us staying indoors, trying to keep calm, avoiding everyone and everything we ever knew before; all while simultaneously juggling a new reality where we have lost work, do not know how to pay our bills and have no idea how long this is going to continue. Combine this with the long-term implications of what kind of world we will come back to once the COVID-19 exit strategy is implemented by our governments, and there is an understandable perfect storm of anxiety and financial precariousness. Whatever life after COVID-19 looks like and whenever that might be, it is clear that our lives will be very much altered. While I welcome conversations about a more evolved, more sustainable fashion sector, I am fully aware that the financial impacts of a retailer freefall on the global south, on many retailers, on our 57,000 UK fashion SMEs and on our economy is hugely damaging.
Dr Lisa Cameron MP Chair of the APPG for Textiles and Fashion has written to the Chancellor asking for extensive support for retailers in light of Debenhams calling in the administrators, a business with 22,000 staff. Our concern is many other retailers are bound to follow. We risk coming out of this pandemic with high streets filled with empty storefronts. Equally, I am concerned that the Coronavirus Act will take away human rights at a time when we are all so vulnerable, all while parliament is in recess. With our PM In intensive care, it is clear this is a horrifically democratic illness and our thoughts at Fashion Roundtable are with each victim, their families and our frontline carers. We are a community.
Response letter from Alok Sharma's team:
2 April 2020
Tamara Cincik
Head of Secretariat
All-Party Parliamentary Group for Textiles and Fashion
Dear Tamara
Thank you for your email dated 17 March to the Rt Hon Alok Sharma MP, about support for the fashion industry during the current COVID-19 emergency. The Secretary of State receives a large amount of correspondence every day and is unable to respond to each one personally. On this occasion I have been asked to reply.
The Government is closely monitoring developments of COVID-19 in relation to potential economic impacts on UK businesses, individuals and the wider economy. The Chancellor has announced unprecedented support for business and workers to protect them against the current economic emergency including:
A Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme where small and large employers will be eligible to apply for a government grant of 80% of workers’ salaries up to £2,500 a month. The scheme will be backdated to March 1 and available for at least three months, with first grants to be paid within weeks;
deferral of the next quarter of VAT payments for firms, until the end of June - representing a £30bn injection into the economy; and
£330bn worth of government backed and guaranteed loans to support businesses, delivered through two schemes:
a. Support for liquidity amongst large firms, with a major new scheme being launched by the Bank of England to help them bridge Coronavirus disruption to their cash flows through loans; and
b. Increasing the amount businesses can borrow through the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme from £1.2m to £5m and ensuring businesses can access the first 6 months of that finance interest free, as Government will cover the first 6 months of interest payments.
We are providing £20bn of direct fiscal support for businesses in England through tax relief and cash grants to help business manage cash flow. This includes:
Cash grants of up to £25,000 for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses with a rateable value of between £15,000 and £51,000;
Cash grants of £10,000 for several hundred thousand businesses eligible for small businesses eligible for business rate relief and rural rate relief; and
Entirely removing all eligible properties in the retail, hospitality and leisure sector from business rates, so that no pub, hotel, or high street shop will pay business rates for 12 months.
This comes on top of compensation for statutory sick pay that the Chancellor announced in the Budget.
As part of this unprecedented package of measures, the Chancellor has announced that the Government will strengthen the safety net for self-employed people by suspending the minimum income floor for everyone affected by the economic impacts of coronavirus. That means every self-employed person can now access, in full, Universal Credit at a rate equivalent to Statutory Sick Pay for employees. Those measures amount to nearly £7bn of extra support through the welfare system to strengthen the safety net and protect people’s incomes. To support the self-employed through the tax system, the next self-assessment payments will be deferred until the end of the year.
The new temporary Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS), delivered by the British Business Bank, is now available to support businesses, including self-employed people. As long as the self-employed person has a business bank account they will be eligible to apply. Decision-making on whether a business is eligible to access CBILS will be fully delegated to the 40+ accredited lenders. The scheme covers overdrafts, loans, asset finance and invoice finance. Full guidance, including eligibility criteria, is available at www.british-business-bank.co.uk/cbils.
For advice and guidance, the dedicated pages at www.gov.uk should be helpful and there is also a Business Support Helpline, 0300 456 3565, so businesses can pick up the phone and speak directly to an adviser.
Thank you again for contacting us and we hope that this information is useful
Yours sincerely
Rachel Morley
BEIS MINISTERIAL CORRESPONDENCE UNIT