John McDonnell hit out at issues in Rishi Sunak’s plans after the Chancellor announced yesterday self-employed workers will also receive 80 percent of their salary during the coronavirus crisis. But until then, they have been directed to claim universal credit or sick pay. The Shadow Chancellor argued its taking too long to get money to people.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Mr McDonnell said: “The big issue is people having to wait until June.

“The Chancellor yesterday said ‘Look, they can go to banks for loans’ – we’re getting lots of reports where the banks actually aren’t helping.

“And the other issue that people are reporting on overdrafts – the banks are increasing the overdraft charges from 7 percent to 39 percent.

“We’ve got to say to the banks, come on! You’ve got to do your job.

“We’ve had example after example. MPs on all sides of the house have rasied this and we’ve got to tackle it.

“Where the Chancellor has said to people, you can also apply for Universal Credit loan. There was 130,000 people on the hotline the other night.”

BBC host Martha Kearney interjected: “On Universal Credit, the Government’s drafted a lot of extra civil servants to administer it.

“They, as we heard earlier, have raised the standard allowance and they’re also saying claimants won’t have to wait five weeks for a payment because they can get an advance.”

Mr McDonnell added: “The advance, again, they are saying that will be a matter of days. We’re hoping so.

“But as I said there were 130,000 on the hotline the other night, 500,000 new applications.

“The other issue as well is they’ve said you can rely on Universal Credit but they’ve raised if to the statutory level of sick pay.

“It’s too little. Why don’t we just simply accept that? We’ve been calling for four weeks now for universal credit and statutory sick pay should be at the level of national living wage.

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“That way people will protect themselves instead of being forced into work.”

Chancellor Rishi Sunak on Thursday announced a fresh package of measures to support self-employed people left worse off by the UK lockdown but admitted not every job and business would be saved by the Treasury’s interventions.

Mr Sunak’s announcement came after the daily death toll of those who had passed away after contracting coronavirus exceeded 100 for the first time since the pandemic began.

A total of 578 people have died so far in the UK after being diagnosed with the deadly virus.

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