📣 OPEN LETTER SENT TO THE CHANCELLOR TODAY📣
Yesterday Chancellor Rt Hon John Healey, wrote to me regarding his speech at the Labour Party Conference and how he is working to make Britain hope again.
Today, in my roles as Head of ExcludedUK and Secretariat Secretary of the Gaps in Covid-19 Financial Support APPG, I have sent an open letter to the Chancellor.
The message is simple:
The 3.8 million taxpayers excluded from meaningful Covid-19 financial support have waited long enough.
I explained that Prime Minister Andy Burnham has supported our campaign for more than six years, describing the injustice faced by the excluded as “indefensible” and saying that any solution should be “fair, proportionate and doable.”
Now we need those words to become action.
I have asked the Chancellor to sit down with us.
To listen to the bereaved.
To listen to those still repaying pandemic debt.
To listen to those whose businesses, homes and mental health were devastated.
And to work with us on what recognition, accountability and fair financial redress should now look like.
As the Chancellor’s own message said:
“HOPE ISN’T SOMETHING WE WAIT FOR. IT’S SOMETHING WE BUILD.”
The excluded have already waited more than six years.
It is time to build that hope for them too.
The APPG will be meeting next month to decide how to progress with our campaign, but none of us can do too much to ramp this pressure up to ensure we get the commitment that Andy Burnham has promised us for well over 6 years.
Below is the open letter in full. Please forward a copy to your MP and local media. Ask your MP to join our APPG, which they can do by emailing admin@excludeduk.org to register.
Many thanks
Jennifer
Dutifully paid in. Deliberately left out.
#ExcludedUK #Excluded #Covid19 #APPG #FinancialRedress #BounceBackLoans #MentalHealth #justicefortheexcluded
Open_Letter_to_John_Healey_ExcludedUK_28_September_2026 – RP amended – 290926 (1)
My childminding business was forced to close overnight. But as I also had a part time teaching position (and continued to work 2 days per week in school throughout the pandemic). I lost 2/3 of my salary (my 3 days per week childminding), but I was excluded from any financial support because of my situation. My family suffered as a result and we struggled to pay our mortgage and our bills during the pandemic. I was forced to close my business, yet I was given no support to do so.
As a member of ##ExcludedUK since day one that our group was founded I feel that I must share the trauma experience resulting from my husband being left with no financial support during the Covid Pandemic.
My husband was then 54 years of age running his ‘one man band’ Ltd Company. Ltd only because he had to be to be contracted with the company he was then contracted to.
Work dried up instantly leaving him zero income and no funancial support from the then Government.
At that point he had then been a UK taxpayer for 38 YEARS but was deliberately left out of the support that the majority of UK workers benifited from.
At that time we had 3 children under the age of 18 to support with zero income.
We initially felt calm and fairly secure as the financial packages were being rolled out…Until… the devastating day when we realised that my husband ‘slipped through the gaps’ of support and we were left in financial devastation.
I can still feel and remember the impact that this took on me physically and mentally when I think back to it. My body froze and I felt like my blood had literally turned cold. I went into complete panic!!
This could not be true?!!!
I searched and searched for answers until I came across a tiny group of people on Facebook who were in the same position as us. That is when we began setting up ##ExcludedUK and we soon became a huge Facebook community.
We came together to try to support each other and to campain to get the Government to see us and acknowledge us but that recognition never came!
We became a group that no-one really wanted to be part of but what we had been forced into.
Our monthly rental propery alone was £1,200!
We took loans from our families (My own Mother gave us money from her tiny pension) We both took out Bounce Back Loans to the value of £17,000 and I was forced to cash in my private pension early just to survive… Just to pay our household bills and to feed our 3 children!
We are both still paying back our Bounce Back loans and the loan that I took from my own brother just to survive! What an insult every month when our payments still go out from our hard earned personal money!
This, when we saw our family and friends enjoying their Furlough and Seiss payments and enjoying the peace and comfort of support from the Government. Friends who don’t work who still got their financially support from Government financial support payments…Nothing changed for any of them but ourselves as hard working UK taxpayers were ignored and just left to crumble.
We were left completely financially devastated!
Our marriage became under extreme pressure as both of our mental healths hit rock bottom.
The stress of continued panic about the possibility of losing our home as our landlord still demanded our monthly rental month after month and being forced to use food banks to feed the 5 of us whilst trying to keep our children unaware of our financial situation.
We started avoiding contact with our friends and families as we were becoming resentful of their ‘happy covid days’ sitting in the sun completely safe and contented that their bills were being paid by the Government. We just couldn’t take the mental trauma of their contentment at a time when we most needed their support.
Covid itself left us isolated but the financial impact left us further isolated.
The only people that I wanted contact with at that time was our online community as they were the only ones who truely knew the devastation that we were constantly feeling.
Six years on our friends and family are continuing to enjoy their carefree financial situations doing things that we can still no longer do as we are still paying back debt and trying to build back some sort of financial strength.
My husband and I are both 7 years away from retirement. A retirement that once looked quite comfortable but now looks bleek as we continue to struggle to get back on top of our financial struggles resulting from the devastation of the Covid financial impact on us.
I ask you…Is this fair?…Is this just? Do we not deserve some recognition and compensation to help us to lift some of our ongoing stress from this huge injustice?
Please, please I ask you to meet with us to truely hear the trauma and devastation of our situations.
Kind Regards
Julie Convy.
I was given no help by the government when overnight my income fell to zero. As a self-employed musician and music teacher I had no way of earning during lockdown. Because I had been employed previously for 2 years as a teacher, despite being self-employed previously for over 20 years, my tax return fell into the 50% rule – meaning I received nothing.
I have never got over this. Seeing other people receive support, whilst I was left to rot by my government was devastating. It is hard to even think about it now, let alone fight for it. But we will go on and we will fight for justice because I am one of many and the injustice needs to be corrected.
Because I had invested in my business in January 2020 I had no “profit” for the 2019-20 Tax Year, and was anticipating to more than pay for it from the Tourist Guiding bookings I had for April and May, leaving a tidy profit for the rest of the year. Not only did I have no tourists to guide for 2020, but also well into 2021, but I was ineligible for any financial support from the government.
Fortunately, my husband’s pension kept us fed, and dear friends dropped off fresh vegetables and hen’s eggs from their gardens as I also went down with Covid, just before the first Lockdown, being bedridden for 40 days and recuperating a further 60 days. Our son helped us with supermarket food parcels too.
If it wasn’t for the online community of #ExcludedUK, I would have struggled mentally too, due to the fact that employees were enjoying Furlough, and self-employed businesses in profit achieved the criteria for SEISS….
I find it desperately sad that at least 40 of our community took their own lives prior to the last General Election, having lost literally everything they had, plus a further three deaths since the General Election…
It is high time that the injustices were properly recognised, and that steps are taken to ensure that nothing like that ever happens again.
Andy Burnham previously described the injustices as intolerable. We are still waiting for justice…
I was a child minder lost alot of work in covid – had to pause mortgage and car loans . Had to get 2 bounce back loans still trying to pay off . Unfair many paid to stay at home and some working anyway getting double money !!!
My event floristry business was significantly impacted in 2020 and the years that followed. All the weddings and events I was booked to create florals for were cancelled as a result of government rules. The weddings and funerals that were permitted to take place further down the line only allowed a small number of attendees and that meant the flowers people would usually order would now be too big for their requirements so clients were not ordering the quantities they would have done prior to Covid. In addition, at points the supply chain of flowers was disrupted so even the small events taking place I was unable to get materials for., Covid has had a huge impact on flower prices which also meant people were priced out and were ordering considerably less., Prior to setting up my floristry business I was a litigation lawyer earning a good salary and even though I was PAYE since the age of 16 when I got my first Saturday job, and have worked and paid tax ever since, I was not eligible for any financial support and was told I was deemed a fraud risk as I hadn’t filed 3 tax returns by the time covid hit. I am married and have three children and 2020 and the years following have been incredibly stressful. My outgoings didn’t stop but my income did as a result of all the events that generated my income being forced to close due to the Government forbidding them to go ahead. I lost the majority of my income. My family suffered as a result and I struggled to pay my bills during the pandemic. I was forced to close my business, yet I was given no support to do so.
Our family business employing highly skilled engineering staff was forced to liquidate last year. The pandemic saw our turnover drop from 1.2 million to a little over £70,000 as all the premises we looked after were closed. Unable to furlough staff due to contract obligations we worked through the lockdowns and the interim periods looking after hospitals and emergency services venues on an emergency only basis. Our staff were fully paid but not fully occupied so we tasked them with various community/social value activities including the coordination and logistical support of a community scrubs production line for our local acute and surgical hospital – where nhs grade scrub sets were running perilously low. For my part I used the extra time to set up and run a community support resource which saw us have 12 coordinators and over 70 helpers dedicated to supporting the daily living needs of our vulnerable or shielding local residents – also setting up a volunteer run meals on wheels service ‘The Grub Club’ which delivered over 2,500 meals cooked and conveyed to our most vulnerable residents with additional long-arm social work support for good measure.
My partner and I were dividend paid – as so many were and had absolutely no support – so in addition to running our business and all the social value activities we were providing for free, I had to take two additional jobs to pay my own family’s living expenses whilst one of my grown up children attended university undertaking a medical degree and the other worked through an engineering apprenticeship in our business.
Our reserves were soon used up, and debts amassed we took any borrowing available but got nothing to support our incredible little SME which had a social value footprint most PLC’s would be jealous of – dedicated to ethical trading, local employment, living wage paying and high end training of our staff in the end counted for NOTHING. Every connected politician was approached by me up to and including the PM, the first minister for wales, the Secretary of State for Wales and the finance minister for wales but all did or said nothing of any consequence to either hear or help our/my increasingly desperate pleas.
We were put out of business by our bank in 2025 who moved us to their business support unit and bore down on us with relentless pressure – which is the subject of a current complaint as the bank chase us for repayment of overhanging debt right now including making threats over our family home – six years later.
Six years of anxiety, six years of sleepless nights, six years of living in survival mode. A living and avoidable nightmare – all we asked for was timely proportionate support whilst we supported our staff, the emergency services and our wider community. None came.
Yet our very impressive PM tells us to have ‘hope’
To have ‘hope’ one needs to first have ‘belief’ and ‘trust’ and they need to be rooted in ‘action’ and fulfilled ‘promises’ so far the threads of promises made have not yet been picked up, much less been fashioned into the blanket of hope this country will need in order to turn the tide of despair and drift into a vibrant and viable future – our SME little ships were a fundamental part of everything great about our country but they were left to their own devices and to crash upon the rocks of a crisis they did not create – whilst watching others make hay with lucrative useless contracts from the safety of their super-yacht guardrails.
We need action, we need an investigation and we need a tribunal for those worst affected by their pandemic losses to have their 3.8 million stories heard and we need restitution for those who could no longer face a life in which they lost everything they’d ever worked for.
Then we can have ‘HOPE’
On October 8th I should be celebrating 25 years at the helm of Kingston Catering Repairs, but celebrating is the last thing on my mind.
My partner and I were not mandated to close when all our clients in hospitality were. Plus, we had invested in the business, so made no profit. Doubly excluded, if you will.
My mum, then in her 70s and living in a different country walked six miles to transfer some of her meager savings so that we could pay some bills and continued to send money for food. We came very close to losing our home. I wrote a desperate email to Robin Bullough, the then-CEO of TSB telling him why I couldn’t pay my mortgage and how if I lost my place of safety then I would lose my life.
Yes, the ‘S’ word. I am still amazed that I am still alive. Exclusion left me attempting to end my life several times, with several mental health interventions. In one fell swoop everything I had worked for and everything that made me me had been ripped away and whilst others were baking banana bread and buying puppies I was striding up and down the south Clyde quayside speaking in tongues only I could understand and judging the right time allow the tide to take me to a better place.
Six years on both of us are the shadow of the people we were before covid. The business is certainly a shadow of itself. Our mental health has not recovered. My partner second guesses everything he does professionally, things that came to him as second nature after decades of being a Catering engineer. My chronic illnesses (Has anyone noticed the amount of entrepreneurs who have chronic illnesses? It’s due to our need to work with the need to be able to manage our conditions) have worsened to the point that in the past five months I have spent an average of three days out of every seven bedridden.
I want hope. I want justice. I want parity.
I lost 80% of my income due to lockdowns and received precisely £0 in support. The injustice still makes me angry. It’s about time government listens to those of us excluded from the support promised.
I became self-employed in 2018/19 after being a PAYE employee for over 30 years. I was shamefully excluded from any COVID support as I did not have 2 complete years of self-assessment records. I was still working p/t as a PAYE employee, one day a week in 2020, and asked that employer if they would furlough me so I got some financial help, at least. That employer refused to furlough anyone – remember, furlough was optional for employers, not mandatory! That is often forgotten. In the end, in desperation as the bills continued to mount and no help whatsoever was received, I had no choice but to take a Bounce Back Loan, which I am still paying back to this day. All my savings was wiped out just to try to cope in the early months and I am now left with having to work for many more years, until way past retirement age, in order to try to get back what I lost through deliberate exclusion. I paid into the system for over 30 years and have done so for a further 6 years since COVID. Where is the justice for me? Why has exclusion from any COVID help been allowed to destroy lives, like mine, and lead to such devastating consequences for 10% (3.8 million tax payers)of the workforce of this country? This is a scandal and needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.
Due to IR35 brought in by the government I was forced to open a limited company in order to continue to work on a self employed basis on mainly government contracts. That same government who said each and every day ‘No-one will be left behind’ then decreed that as the director of a limited company I WAS going to be left behind. Single mother with auto immune issues left with absolutely NO income. Forced by the same government to open a limited company who then subsequently decided I and my children were not worthy of help. Disgusting!!