Finance Bill

The furlough scheme, on its own, protected 11.5 million jobs. Does the hon. Gentleman seriously think that the Government should expand some extraordinary array of resource to find out what those 11.5 million people did with the money that kept them in work when they could have been looking at unemployment, and we could have been facing the most staggering economic depression in our history? We avoided that and, instead, we reduced unemployment by 2 million more than was expected. We avoided that cut in jobs, which would have been absolutely devastating for communities across the country, and we should all be grateful.