Johnson warns Cabinet to expect ‘bumpy months’ ahead

THE UK faces more “bumpy months” as it copes with the impact of coronavirus on the nation’s health and finances, Boris Johnson warned.

As the Cabinet gathered yesterday for a face-to-face meeting for the first time since March, the Prime Minister stressed the need to “get our economy moving”.

The symbolic meeting is an attempt by Downing Street to show that it is safe to return to workplaces as part of efforts to restart the economy.

But in a sign of the changes forced on the country by the virus, the meeting took place in the Foreign Office’s grand Locarno Suite rather than the smaller Cabinet Room in 10 Downing Street.

Ministers were required to remain at least a metre apart, there was hand sanitiser available on entry and exit and they were all given individual water bottles rather than sharing jugs.

Opening the meeting, Mr Johnson said there will be “difficult months ahead for our people and our country, but no-one will be without hope.

“We will build back better and come through this crisis more strongly than ever before,” the

Prime Minister said. “And for the next few months we have to strike a balance – we have to continue to push down on this virus and keep it under control in the heroic way the British people have managed so far.

“But we must also cautiously, while observing the rules on social distancing, get our economy moving again and get our people back into work.”

It came as England’s chief medical officer launched a staunch defence of his actions over the Covid-19 pandemic, saying mass testing had to be abandoned due to capacity issues and lockdown came at about the right time.

Meanwhile, Chancellor Rishi Sunak yesterday announced public sector workers on the frontline of the pandemic would receive a pay rise.

Almost 900,000 workers including doctors, teachers and police officers will be given an above-inflation pay rise following a testing few months since Covid-19 hit the UK.

But as he launched a comprehensive spending review, he also warned that there would have to be restraint in future public sector pay rises.

CHANCELLOR RISHI Sunak has warned that the Government must “exercise restraint” in pay rises for public servants just after announcing an above-inflation rise for 900,000 workers.

The Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) will set departmental resource budgets from 2021/22 to 2023/24 and capital budgets from 2021/22 until 2024/25.

No set spending envelope has been fixed, but departments have been told that their budgets will grow above inflation.

Mr Sunak was clear to ministerial colleagues that the impact of Covid-19 means there has to be tough choices on spending in other areas at the review.

Whitehall departments have been asked to identify opportunities to reprioritise spending and deliver savings.

Departments will also be required to fulfil a series of conditions in their returns, including providing evidence that they are delivering the Government’s priorities.

Mr Sunak, who is MP for Richmond in North Yorkshire, said: “The first phase of our economic response to coronavirus was about safeguarding employment as far as possible.

“Our goal in the second phase is to protect, create and support jobs, and we set out our plan to achieve this two weeks ago.

“The Comprehensive Spending

Review is our opportunity to deliver on the third phase of our recovery plan – where we will honour the commitments made in the March Budget to rebuild, level up and invest in people and places, spreading opportunities more evenly across the nation.”

Treasury officials said Mr Sunak has stressed that “in the interest of fairness we must exercise restraint in future public sector pay awards, ensuring that, across this year and the spending review period, public sector pay levels retain parity with the private sector”.

The launch of the CSR came after the Chancellor confirmed above-inflation rises for 900,000 public sector workers, with teachers and doctors seeing the largest increase, at 3.1 per cent and 2.8 per cent respectively.

The CSR will focus on Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s “levelling up” agenda across the country and improving outcomes in public services, including the NHS and tackling crime.

Official said it would also support efforts to make the UK a “scientific superpower”, including the development of technologies that will support the Government’s ambition to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Separately, officials figures revealed yesterday that government borrowing rocketed to a record £127.9bn in the first quarter of the financial year due to soaring spending at the height of the coronavirus crisis.

The Office for National Statistics estimated that borrowing in the first three months of the 2020/21 financial year was more than double the £55.4bn seen in the whole of 2019-20 as the UK spent heavily on emergency support measures during the lockdown.

We must exercise restraint in public sector pay awards. Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak.