Businesses can apply for up for 25 per cent of their turnover to a maximum of £50,000 with the Government paying the interest for a year.
The Chancellor is set to build a relief road to get round the present pile-up of Government, banks and business.
Ministers can carry on trying, through the British Business Bank or directly, to push on this Gordian Knot – or slice through it.
We don’t expect the shutdown to last in full until summer. But if it did, Britain might well be moving towards Universal Credit as a basic income.
Large numbers of people are falling through the eligibility gaps – caught between schemes for the employed and self-employed.
I’ve faith that people are focused on that bigger picture, which drives reported levels of understanding and appreciation, if not necessarily popularity.
If employers consider themselves to be heading for catastrophe, it suggests that the wider public will catch up before too long.
Independent shops and businesses in Soho, Carnaby Street, and the back lanes of Mayfair, whilst not making headlines, will now have gone for ever.
Despite help being set out for companies during the pandemic, there have been issues with the implementation of schemes. Ministers must keep an eye on this.
I’m acutely aware that in our rural communities, where we are a few weeks behind major cities, knowing someone in hospital is more rare.
The part of the country that is working well is the part that is not waiting for people in a risk-averse chain of centralised command to make a decision.
If you really want to see how we’re pulling together, the best example is taking shape now at the NEC, outside Birmingham – the new NHS Nightingale Hospital.
The job now needs to be completed by shoring up workers’ incomes and firms’ revenues to as close to 100 per cent as is practical.
The Prime Minister’s hospitalisation accentuates the need for a new strategic structure to support a new strategic plan.
With no fiscal leeway for stimulus spending, a bold supply-side programme will be crucial for the UK.