The Chancellor says the focus remains on 'a collective national effort to beat this virus'
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The UK Chancellor has challenged the view of the government’s own independent fiscal watchdog after it published a report that stated the country’s economy could shrink by 35 per cent and leave two million people out of work.
Earlier, the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) warned that with a three month lock down until June would trigger the economic decline while unemployment is set to rise by more than 2.4 million people.
However, the OBR did say that the economy would bounce back in the second half of the year to press Covid-19 crisis levels when modest growth of 0.2 per cent was anticipated.
But Mr Sunak outlined his interpretation of those figures and underlined that the “single most important thing we can do for the health of our economy is to protect the health of our people – it is not a case of choosing between the economy and public health.”
He said: “It is important to be clear the OBR numbers are not a forecast or a prediction, they simply set out what one possible scenario might look like and it may not even be the most likely scenario
“But it's important that we are honest with people about what might be happening in our economy so I want to spend a few minutes explaining what the OBR have said and let me thank them for their continued work
“There are three brief points I wanted to make, first the OBR’s figures suggest the scale of what we are facing will have serious implications for our economy here at home in common with other countries around the world
“These are tough times and there will be more to come, as I've said before, we can't protect every business and every household but we came into this crisis with a fundamentally sound economy powered by the hard work and ingenuity of the British people and British businesses.
“So while those economic impacts are significant the OBR also expects them to be temporary with a bounce back in growth.
“The second point I want to make is that we are not just going to stand by and let this happen. Our planned economic response is protecting millions of jobs, businesses, self-employed people, charities and households.
“Our response aims to directly support people and businesses while the restrictions are in place and to make sure that as the restrictions are changed we can as quickly as possible get people back to work get businesses moving again and recover our economy.
“The OBR today have been clear that the policies we have set out will do that – the OBR today have been clear but if we had not taken the actions we have the situation would be much worse, in other words our plan is the right plan
“The third point I want to make is right now the single most important thing we can do for the health of our economy is to protect the health of our people – it is not a case of choosing between the economy and public health.
“Common sense tells us that doing so would be self-defeating at a time when we are seeing hundreds of people dying every day from this terrible disease the absolute priority must be to focus all of our resources not just of the state but of businesses and all of you at home as well in a collective national effort to beat this virus.”
