The coronavirus pandemic has ushered in an economic emergency of gargantuan proportions. The estimates show that £42 billion will be spent on the coronavirus job retention scheme and £10 billion on the self-employment income support scheme. These are very large numbers, but size is not everything, and questions need to be asked about the effectiveness of the packages the Chancellor has announced. Is this massive resource being spent in the most effective way? Is it being spent fairly? Is it helping those who need it most? Is it creating the optimal conditions for recovery when the pandemic finally recedes? The jury is still out on all those questions.
A lifeboat has been launched in the shape of the furlough scheme and the grants or loans made available as the pandemic took hold. It is a leaky and inadequate lifeboat that has prevented the economy going under completely, but it will all come to nothing unless a proper rescue operation is launched to bring the economy back to safety. The Chancellor must make certain that his economic response does not mirror the Prime Minister’s pre-lockdown dithering and organisational incompetence, which is likely to have cost tens of thousands of lives and exacerbated the economic damage wrought by the pandemic.
The Treasury Committee has published a report that deals with the gaps and unfairnesses in the Government’s schemes. We point out that over a million people have been arbitrarily excluded from the scope of various schemes, even though their livelihoods have been affected by the requirement to lock down and there is no reasonable excuse for leaving them out. As the Federation of Small Businesses pointed out, if those who pay themselves in dividends and who have been excluded from accessing support go out of business, they will take a great many employees on PAYE down with them.
We await the formal Treasury response to the Committee’s detailed points, but when questioned in this place, Ministers tend to boast about the size and cost of the schemes they have introduced without addressing the specific issues.