It is pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson) for bringing the debate to Westminster Hall and to colleagues across the House for their comments and remarks.
I have been very struck by the difference in tone among the contributions made. There has been a lot of denunciation, but there has also been a rather fair-minded strand of discussion that acknowledged the extraordinary circumstances in which we as a nation have been placed, and the scale and effectiveness of the Government’s interventions. I particularly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton), the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) and the hon. Member for Stirling (Alyn Smith) for their fair-minded engagement with the issue.
If I may, I will talk a little about where we are and then come to the questions raised by colleagues. Let me be perfectly clear—it is important, as the hon. Member for Midlothian and others mentioned, for us to be tonally clear—that the Government absolutely understand the depth and difficulty of the situation that people have faced throughout the pandemic. That is why we have tried to support as many people and businesses as we possibly can, and to do so as quickly and as effectively as possible. The hon. Gentleman was highly dismissive of that, but actually, I am pleased to say that other hon. Members were not; they recognised that the Government provided a very wide-ranging package of national financial assistance worth over £350 billion, and that international commentators have recognised that. I think of the International Monetary Fund, which described it as
“one of the best examples of coordinated action globally”.
Those packages and bits of concentrated but wide-ranging support include the coronavirus job retention scheme—CJRS—which has supported 11.5 million jobs since its inception, and the self-employment income support scheme—SEISS—which has so far provided grants to almost 3 million people.