Matthew Lynn Matthew Lynn

Rishi Sunak needs to learn to add up

Rishi Sunak (Photo: Getty)

It is, by any measure, a heck of a lot of pizza. The ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme turns out to have been a huge success. We learned today that is was used more than a 100 million times in August. In many cities, it was virtually impossible to get a table from Monday to Wednesday. Plenty of restaurants were grateful for the sudden boom in business, and no doubt a few were saved from closure.

There is a problem, however, and it is a significant one. It turns out that we have a Chancellor who struggles to add up, and Treasury officials who don’t know much about basic economics – and that matters. By any measure, Rishi Sunak’s half-price meal deal, launched to persuade us all to get back into the habit of eating out again, has been a hit. Restaurant bookings were up by more than 60 per cent on the days in question. For many, Monday turned into the new Friday. And while some of that may have simply shifted demand from one part of the week to another, there is no question it helped the trade bounce back from lockdown. Given the importance to the economy of the trade, and the huge number of jobs at stake, that counts as a success.

The trouble is, it is also going to cost a lot of money. The Treasury initially estimated the scheme would cost £500 million. But it has already cost £522m, and restaurants have until the end of September to claim all the money back. The final bill? We will have to wait and see, but if we assume most people spent up to the maximum allowed – and why wouldn’t you with Rishi collecting half the tab – it is likely to be closer to £1 billion.

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Matthew Lynn
Written by
Matthew Lynn
Matthew Lynn is a financial columnist and author of ‘Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis’ and ‘The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031’

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