Over the last couple of weeks, via MSE, my Twitter and Facebook, plus my TV shows, I've had I suspect around 50,000 questions from members of the public worried about their desperate and perilous finances.



Clearly, it's been impossible to read all of them. But the same major themes crop up again and again. Some of those issues stem from deliberate, intended policy decisions – whether that's not covering small limited companies' dividends, or the cliff-edge £50,000 profits cut-off for the self-employed.



Those are important and impact people's lives, but they're also well known and premeditated, which means there's less chance of change.



However, there are sizeable areas where I suspect the result wasn't intended – where there are gaps that could be filled, without too much impact. So below I've bashed out the main holes in the system I hear of and my suggestions to tweak them.

For those looking for help and guidance, rather than policy, please see our Coronavirus Employment guide, and also our Coronavirus and Self-Employment guide if that's more relevant to you.

1. Employers who refuse to furlough staff. The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme makes employers gatekeepers to crucial state support. It allows firms to choose to put employees who were on the payroll on 28 February 2020 – and now don't have work to do – on 'furlough' (a bit like a standby mode).

Then the state finances 80% of their salary up to £2,500/month, plus the employer's national insurance and pension costs. Employers can top this up to 100%, but aren't required to.



Yet whether it's nannies or office workers, I regularly hear of employers that refuse to furlough staff when they can, and instead stick to redundancy/unpaid leave.



This may be out of ignorance, or a lack of care, but also I suspect some do it because they believe like the pre-Covid days, the goal is to reduce reliance on state support. However, the Government has stated furloughing was put in place to fulfil two specific roles:

To provide financial support to the victims of the coronavirus economic cataclysm.

To ensure that the economy can be restarted at speed when this all ends.

So we need the Government to come out and loudly say – or better still advertise – that firms should "furlough if they can". And if employers still won't play ball, look at changing the system to make it mandatory (and help them with any short-term cash-flow gaps to do it).