The road to that unmentionable destination, the lockdown ‘exit’, is long and will take at least nine months. Which means economic recovery will be longer still. And that requires the Chancellor to plan now to make the decline and recovery as benign as possible.
Probably the most important economic therapy (and certainly the most expensive) has been the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, which has persuaded hundreds of thousands of businesses to retain millions of employees on their books, rather than sacking them – but which urgently needs a redesign for the next phase.
That is what business leaders and some ministers tell me. And they have a point.
There are three issues of concern.
1) Unlike in Germany, businesses applying for cash from the UK government to furlough or rest their employees can start – and in some cases have started – the 45 day consultation period that precedes any decision to make staff redundant.
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