Rishi Sunak has said not all jobs could be saved during the Covid-19 pandemic, but the government was able to prevent mass unemployment.<\/p>\n
The former prime minister, who was chancellor at the time, said it \u00ab\u00a0wasn’t going to be possible to save every person’s job\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n
But he said the government was \u00ab\u00a0successful in preventing mass unemployment\u00a0\u00bb and the impact of the pandemic on employment was \u00ab\u00a0considerably better than what anyone had forecast at the early stages of the pandemic\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n
Sunak also said there was \u00ab\u00a0not a playbook\u00a0\u00bb to deal with the economic shock caused by Covid, with ministers \u00ab\u00a0dealing with something no one had dealt with before\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n
The former PM was giving evidence to the public inquiry into the pandemic on Monday, answering questions on the policies he set out to support workers’ incomes and keep businesses afloat.<\/p>\n
He said that at the outbreak of the crisis, there was an \u00ab\u00a0enormous amount of uncertainty\u00a0\u00bb, with policymakers and experts unsure of the scale and duration of the virus and how the population would respond to any measures imposed by the government.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0There was not a toolkit, there was not a playbook that you could pull of the shelf that said this is how you tend to deal with pandemics in the same way you somewhat have with other economic shocks or financial shocks,\u00a0\u00bb he said.<\/p>\n
Over the past three weeks, the inquiry has been delving into the economic response to the pandemic, hearing from former ministers, treasury officials and central bankers.<\/p>\n
A key finding from the Covid inquiry last month was that the government did not take the virus seriously enough until it was \u00ab\u00a0too late\u00a0\u00bb, with February 2020 a \u00ab\u00a0lost month\u00a0\u00bb for action.<\/p>\n
Sunak’s appearance on Monday was the second time he has taken the stand, after previously giving evidence in December 2023 when he was still prime minister.<\/p>\n
He was appointed chancellor of Boris Johnson’s government on 13 February, and was preparing to present a Budget before the pandemic hit UK shores and the country was put into lockdown a month later.<\/p>\n
Sunak told the inquiry that one of his priorities was to prevent mass unemployment and said \u00ab\u00a0speed was paramount\u00a0\u00bb in the government’s response.<\/p>\n
He said there was an \u00ab\u00a0acknowledgement\u00a0\u00bb in the Treasury that they were not going to \u00ab\u00a0get everything right straight away\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0We could not let perfect be the enemy of the good,\u00a0\u00bb he said. \u00ab\u00a0We had to get things out fast.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n
Sunak said it was not possible \u00ab\u00a0to save every person’s job\u00a0\u00bb, but said that \u00ab\u00a0as it turned out, the impact on living standards particularly for the most vulnerable in society… were stronger that I would have perhaps anticipated going into this and I’m very proud of that\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n
The coronavirus job retention scheme, known as furlough, was announced by Sunak in March 2020.<\/p>\n
At his previous appearance in front of the inquiry, Sunak defended his Eat Out to Help Out policy, which was one of the government’s policy measures aimed to support businesses reopening after the first lockdown.<\/p>\n
Sunak also told the inquiry he was advised by medical officials not to intervene \u00ab\u00a0too early\u00a0\u00bb when the pandemic struck.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0Especially in those early conversations, a lot of what the medical and scientific community were advising us at that time was not to go too early with the various interventions, because they were worried about public acceptance of them,\u00a0\u00bb he said.<\/p>\n
The furlough scheme was the centrepiece of Sunak’s intervention in the UK economy, designed to stave off a wave of job losses as the country closed down in the face of the virus.<\/p>\n
Richard Wright KC, counsel to the inquiry, said hearings to date had received \u00ab\u00a0generally positive evidence\u00a0\u00bb in relation to the policy.<\/p>\n
Sunak said that after the original scheme was rolled out, the government drew up a targeted version of it which \u00ab\u00a0never saw the light of day\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0We spent an inordinate amount of time over the summer iterating a more targeted version of furlough; hours and hours of work to do exactly that, on the basis that we were moving to a different phase of the pandemic,\u00a0\u00bb he said.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0We did develop something called JSS (Jobs Support Scheme) which never saw the light of day because we had another lockdown.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n
Sunak added there \u00ab\u00a0wasn’t a way of targeting that I felt comfortable with\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n
Asked to respond to criticism that the furlough scheme could have been shorter or longer, the former chancellor said: \u00ab\u00a0I think this is something where we have to be really careful about hindsight\u00a0\u00bb, but added he believed the approach was balanced correctly.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0If this thing happens again, it’s not obvious to me that there’s some learning from that period that would make it easier for someone in my position to make that balance,\u00a0\u00bb he said.<\/p>\n
On support for self-employed workers, Sunak said there were challenges with the scheme, given that those applying had to self-certify.<\/p>\n
But he said it was right to support self-employed people and that he would \u00ab\u00a0do it again\u00a0\u00bb if in the same position.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rishi Sunak has said not all jobs could be saved during the Covid-19 pandemic, but the government was able to prevent mass unemployment. The former prime minister, who was chancellor at the time, said it \u00ab\u00a0wasn’t going to be possible to save every person’s job\u00a0\u00bb. But he said the government was \u00ab\u00a0successful in preventing mass […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9852","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9852\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}