Support for business cannot be withdrawn quite yet, Mr Sunak

ANYONE trying to piece together the jigsaw showing what might happen in the coming months, with our health and our economy, will have noticed a major piece missing following the Prime Minister’s announcement on Monday of the shape of the roadmap to freedom.

Even as it became clear that opening up is going to be slow and cautious there was no mention, from Boris Johnson, of how businesses, many of which have missed approaching a year of restrictionfree trading, are going to keep going until we are back to normal.

That missing piece must be comprehensively filled in on Wednesday by Chancellor Rishi Sunak. Last year, as it seemed we were emerging from the worst of the crisis, Mr Sunak produced a number of innovative and useful measures to help tide over the struggling British economy. Next week in the Budget he needs to do even better.

Anyone returning from Mars after more than 12 months away would struggle to believe that a Conservative Chancellor could spray money around so liberally. That he has been doing so, pretty much continuously for nearly 12 months has been essential to shore up a bashed and bloodied economy. And the Covid hangover is not going to clear up anytime soon, even if – thanks to the vaccine – the disease is in retreat.

So the calls today for an extension of support for hard-hit business, a further holiday from stamp duty for house-buyers and a few more months of furlough, so that employees with no work can be kept on by their employers, makes sense.

But those demanding that extension, in order to help the economy survive have got to be realistic when they set out their stalls. Because at some point the money paid out has got to come back in, if Britain is to balance the books.

We could, fingers crossed, be through the worst and opening up again by late June. But, even so, the need for financial support, especially in the hospitality and tourism sectors – likely to be the last to taste true freedom – will go on for some months after that.

So a cut off date in Autumn, as suggested in today’s WMN by Stuart Elford, chief executive of Devon and Plymouth Chamber of Commerce and chair of British Chambers of Commerce South West, makes sense. It may need to be extended still further, as Kim Conchie, chief executive of Cornwall Chamber of Commerce, warns – also in today’s WMN. But no one should be under an illusion that the longer the crutch holding up businesses remains in place, the more painful it becomes when it has to be kicked away.

There have already been several major casualties of the Covid-19 crisis announced. Some, it is true, were on a steep downward slope already. The Covid crisis simply deliver the coup de grace.

But others were and are viable and need support only to tide them over. They’re the ones who truly deserve more funds to bail them out. Payback time will come, but right now, with the virus still threatening our health and our livelihoods too, Mr Sunak is going to have to dig deep into his piggy bank once more. The bounce back will come – but it’s still a fair way off.