IFS analysis of chancellor’s plans to be published as Sunak takes to airwaves this morning
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The chancellor Rishi Sunak has told BBC Breakfast the government’s support plan is one of the “most comprehensive and generous set of interventions” in the world, but acknowledged some people would still be badly affected.
After outlining the schemes announced on Wednesday, Sunak said:
The analysis we published yesterday which shows the totality of what we’ve done demonstrates very clearly that the lowest income households are the ones who have been supported the most by everything we have done but I would acknowledge that this has been a period of extreme hardship for many people and indeed hardship lies ahead.
“I can’t get my head around how the Chancellor expects anyone to survive on zero income”
This is what the Chancellor Rishi Sunak had to say when we put self-employed Mark’s concerns to him on #BBCBreakfast ⤵️
More here: https://t.co/4HnJdiBF94 pic.twitter.com/0x6t5oaB43
If you’re saying to me there are individual people who are suffering hardship as a result of what’s happened then I completely agree and I sympathise with that, it is not possible to ensure that every single person is not impacted by what’s happening.
We’ve shut our country and economy down for months on end, that is sadly going to have a significant impact and I’ve consistently been honest with people that hardship lies ahead and that’s why we’ve tried to mitigate as much of that hardship as possible.
Despite the focus on eating out on many of the front pages this morning, the real highlight of the chancellor’s statement was the confirmed ending of the furlough scheme in October.
My colleagues Lary Elliott and Heather Stewart report that despite Rishi Sunak’s rescue package and “plan for jobs”, fears of a looming crisis of mass unemployment are visceral.
Redundancy notices are already flying around like confetti, so today was the day we needed the chancellor to put a stop to this with policies as bold and as necessary as the jobs retention scheme.
This statement failed that test. With no modification to the JRS, that dreaded October cliff edge for businesses and workers has now been set in stone. Our fear is the summer jobs loss tsunami we have been pleading with the government to avoid will now surely only gather pace.
Related: Mass unemployment feared despite Rishi Sunak's 'plan for jobs'
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