Simple step to avoid economic meltdown

The latest economic charts look less like a line graph and more like a cliff edge. Growth plunged 20.4 per cent in April, the scale of the drop dwarfing anything seen in the 2008/09 global recession.

nine million Britons are having their salaries paid by the Treasury while unemployment has leapt from 850,000 to more than two million.

The prosperity accrued in the past decade has been wiped out almost overnight – and with it the effort and sacrifice that made it possible.

Ministers in Whitehall and holyrood had no option but to orchestrate this crash. Without radical action, who knows how much higher the 41,000 death toll could have climbed.

But the toll on the nation’s finances can be tolerated no longer. Unless we get the economy back on its feet, we will be facing a lost generation beset by long-term unemployment, collapsed businesses, disrupted education and severely damaged mental wellbeing. All of these would have knock-on costs for the economy. It would be a vicious cycle and a self-imposed one.

It is imperative that our lives begin returning to normal and the fastest (and safest) way to achieve that is by reconsidering the two-metre social distancing rule. This regulation was put in place with the best of intentions but its strictures make it near-impossible to resume day-to-day activities.

Dentists cannot fill cavities from two metres and schools will not accommodate their full rolls on these terms. Anyone who has been to a supermarket lately knows how unworkable two metres has become.

The World health Organisation says one metre is safe. One metre is the rule in France, Denmark and Singapore.

One metre would allow us to begin the long economic rebuild.

The Scottish Government should adopt one metre and start to give us back our lives and livelihoods.