Economic crisis will hurt us all

BEFORE London gets totally locked down, I’m making the most of being able to get out.

I went for a jog on Friday morning and was very surprised to run past five houses in my area of southwest London that were having building work done, with workers on site.

Most people are working from home by now – or not working at all.

But of course bricklayers, labourers and landscapers are still out there earning a living because there is little financial support if they don’t.

And this is why the Chancellor has to do more to help the millions of self-employed.

Offering them Universal Credit and a six-month deferment of a tax payment isn’t enough.

However, it’s clear that Rishi Sunak has finally understood the scale of the economic catastrophe facing the UK.

This week he announced £330billion of Government guaranteed loans to businesses and offered to pay 80 per cent of workers’ wages to stop them being made redundant.

He now gets it. His problem, though, is getting cash to those who need it quickly enough to stop economic collapse.

And that’s a huge problem. I imagine Mr Sunak knows that the self-employed need help, he just doesn’t know how to do it yet.

And this highlights another problem – he is forced to make up “unprecedented” policies in days.that leaves little time for the civil service to write the rules and set up the systems needed to pay the cash out.

So the economic outlook still looks grim.

The health crisis is devastating, through the death of loved ones.

But, hopefully, that shouldn’t be too many of us.

The economic crisis, though, will hurt us all.