Recommendation 20

HM Government Acknowledged

73. We welcome the strong level of engagement between the Government and business in the early months of the pandemic. The Government must be as open with the business sector as possible, particularly by providing reasonable notice and detail of impending changes to health and business restrictions, and working as constructively as it did in spring and summer 2020 to develop comprehensive and practical guidance on how businesses should adapt to changing health measures. We recommend that the Government proactively engages with businesses and trade union leaders on an on- going basis, to ensure feedback is built into Government policy making as we recover from the economic consequences of the pandemic. (Paragraph 69) 74. We thank the Committee for their recognition of the strong level of engagement carried out by Government in spring/summer 2020. During 2020, BEIS Ministers carried out roughly three times as many engagements with businesses than the same period in 2019. This engagement transitioned away from immediate support measures required early on in the pandemic, towards more targeted engagement on the developing and refining the safer working guidance for different working environments. 75. We are proactively engaging with Business Representative Organisations (BROs), Trade Associations, Trades Union Congress (TUC), Local Authorities, Local Enterprise Partnerships, sector councils and via one-to-one bilaterals with business on Covid-19 response. These ongoing engagements are used to collect direct intelligence on the impact of Covid-19 on industries and sectors that informs the response from BEIS and other Government Departments and ensures the effectiveness of the Government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic and economic recovery. 76. We plan to continue with our engagement as we recover from the economic consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, such as maintaining engagement with business on Covid-Secure guidance to protect their staff and customers, communicating any changes to restrictions clearly to businesses with sufficient notice, and continuing to listen to feedback on the roadmap and its implementation as we move forward over the next few months. BEIS’ Secretary of State has also publicly committed to relentless business engagement going forward.