Rishi Sunak urged by Labour to pay furloughed staff to work again by subsidising wages

Rishi Sunak has been urged by Labour to pay furloughed staff to work again part time by subsidising their wages.

As part of a three step plan to save Britain’s economy, Labour’s shadow chancellor, Anneliese Dodds, will use her role as today’s keynote speaker at the party’s conference to urge Boris Johnson to implement a “Job Recovery Scheme to enable businesses in key sectors to bring back more staff on reduced hours, with government subsidising a proportion of wages for the rest of the working week”.

The proposed scheme would work by rewarding employers who give people hours rather than cut jobs.

Ms Dodds will also call on the Prime Minister to introduce a National Retraining Strategy that will help people “increase their skills or to retrain in a new area”, as well as a Business Rebuilding Programme which will target government support to viable businesses that are struggling.

It comes as the Chancellor’s furlough scheme is due to end on October 31.

Some 10 percent of the workforce remains on the Government’s emergency wage subsidy and vulnerable to job losses. Mr Sunak has vowed to be “creative” in battling rising unemployment, which he said is his “number one priority”.

Meanwhile Sir Keir Starmer failed to rule out Universal Basic Income after Seema Malhotra , the  shadow employment minister, expressed support for a UBI over the weekend.

When asked about UBI, which would see everyone get a set monthly income regardless of means, Sir Keir told the Andrew Marr show: "I think we should look at all options”.  Sir Keir also said it was important his party recognised “the scale of the defeat last December”.

He said “changing and focusing on the future” would mean facing “difficult decisions like tackling anti-Semitism”, as he added that the big difference between his leadership and Jeremy Corbyn’s was “recognising we've lost not just one election, but four”.

"Recognising that we have got to listen to those that used to vote Labour, don't vote Labour any more, or those that have never voted Labour,” he told Sky News' Sophy Ridge programme.

"But we have to be focused on winning the next general election in 2024."