Covid-19: UK to pick up wage bill for 6 more months

After UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson introduced new curbs to final about six months, chancellor Rishi Sunak on Thursday supplied one other multi-billion-pound bundle that features the exchequer choosing up elements of the wage invoice of all staff till April 2021.

The bundle contains extension of VAT aid, loans to struggling corporations and extension of grants to the self-employed. Sunak mentioned he couldn’t make sure that each job is protected, however provided a lifeline to hundreds of thousands of individuals on furlough and to corporations dealing with extreme downturn.

The authorities has been paying a lot of the wage invoice of staff since April, which was as a consequence of finish in October. But the current surge in circumstances and the brand new curbs to final about six months prompted calls for for extension of the schemes.

Sunak mentioned in a press release to the House of Commons: “The resurgence of the virus, and the measures we need to take in response, pose a threat to our fragile economic recovery…Our approach to the next phase of support must be different to that which came before”.

“The primary goal of our economic policy remains unchanged – to support people’s jobs – but the way we achieve that must evolve”. Sunak cancelled the annual winter finances due in October after making a sequence of Covid-influenced mini-budget statements in current months.

The financial plans introduced to this point quantity to over £190 billion of help for individuals, companies and public providers – together with paying the wages of almost 12 million individuals, supporting over one million companies by way of grants, loans and charges cuts.

Sunak mentioned: “Our lives can no longer be put on hold…We find meaning and hope through our friends and family, through our work, through our community. People were not wrong for wanting that meaning, for striving towards normality, and nor was the government wrong to want this for them.”

“(The) truth is the responsibility for defeating Coronavirus cannot be held by government alone. It is a collective responsibility, shared by all. Because the cost is paid by all. We have so often spoken about this virus in terms of lives lost. But the price our country is paying is wider than that”, he added.