The Government is expected to spend £372 billion in its response to Covid, according to the National Audit Office (NAO), with the estimated cost having risen by £100 billion since January. Almost half of this total will be given to furlough and to other business support schemes. The MailOnline has the story.
The NAO Covid cost tracker now captures a full year of predicted costs since the pandemic began, with £172 billion already spent.
It includes £26 billion worth of guaranteed loans which are expected to be written off.
Support for businesses such as the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and the Bounce Back Loan Scheme had the highest estimated cost, at £151 billion.
This was followed by help for the health and social care sector at £97 billion.
Programmes such as the Self Employment Support Scheme, under help for individuals, came to £55 billion.
And there was an additional £65 billion estimated to be spent on support for other public services and emergency responses.
Chairwoman of the Public Accounts Committee Meg Hillier said it showed how public accountability “has never been more important”.
“The NAO’s cost-tracker tool is vital as the primary public data source on Covid spending across Government,” she said.
“With such huge sums going out the door, and Government guaranteeing loans worth over £90 billion, Government faces a long road to recovery ahead.”
The figures were released as question marks remained over whether the public would be freed from working-from-home guidance in June.
Hopes are high that under Step Four of Boris Johnson’s roadmap out of lockdown staff will be encouraged to return to city centers to provide a much-needed boost for local service businesses.
But the new Indian variant that is prevalent in some Northern towns is giving scientists pause over whether the lockdown lifting should be slowed down.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: According to a Sky News report, more people were furloughed at the height of the pandemic than were working from home (WFH), despite the number of people WFH more than doubling in 2020.
It is clear that so-called hybrid working is now on the up – mixing WFH and time in the office – allowing staff greater flexibility on how they manage their time, in many cases, and further savings from commuting every day.
But Sarah Loates, Founder of Loates HR Consultancy, warned that the trend was not always in the best interests of employees.
She said…: “While finance directors are rubbing their hands with glee at the cost savings from dispensing with expensive serviced offices, hybrid working comes at a price, both social and economic.”
“Socially, hybrid working poses the inadvertent creation of ‘donut’ city centres, where businesses migrate to the fringes of cities as vast swathes of the workforce work from home.
“SMEs [small/medium-sized enterprises] reliant on commuter city centre footfall may therefore emerge as economic casualties of hybrid working.
“At a business level, the hidden costs of hybrid working are yet to reveal themselves, such as IT support, reputational damage linked to data breaches and employee relations.
“During lockdown we saw a spike in employees raising grievances, as managers wrestled with managing remotely.
“With hybrid working set to become the enfant terrible of employee engagement, how companies balance the business case of this fundamental shift in working remains to be seen.”
Also worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
The phrase “saving the planet” should always be in inverted commas because it is the most ridiculous of many in the eco lexicon. The planet is 4.5 billion years old and has been through a heck of a lot more in its history than we can ever throw at it. It will be here for several billion years more until the sun expands to swallow it. It doesn’t need to be “saved”, it will be fine.
The phrase that grates with me is ‘we need to…’
(i.e. YOU need to)
And saving it for what… a rainy day?
I suspect Louise Haigh’s stunningly attractive hair dye was probably made from petroleum products. Will Miliband please ban petroleum-based hair dyes?
Greta Thunberg’s day without fossil fuels – Part 1 by John A. Shanahan – Issuu
… the car-makers will tell the [our clown-world government] that thousands of jobs in the industry will soon be lost because of the unrealistic targets to sell Electric Vehicles. …
I imagine that their response would go something like this: “Industry, you say? Jobs in manufacturing, you say? Where people make things … with their hands? Good lord! Are these jobs by any chance for oiks and the other deplorables? Are they [shudder] for the white working class?”
All well and good, but once these facilities are shuttered and gone, and the economic cluster around the is done for, with at least as many jobs again exported to China, THERE IS NO WAY BACK.
England will be a pathetic shell economy.
I don’t think anybody certainly in government can imagine how bad it’s going to be.
I told those of my family who would listen, when the Scamdemic started that there would be blood on the streets. I see no reason to revise that opinion.
It won’t be a civil war. It will be a negotiation and the unions will be bought off in some way… at the expense of everyone else.
The union leaders might well be bought off. The union membership won’t be.
Slightly Off-T but worth posting…
https://off-guardian.org/2024/11/18/explained-how-uk-inheritance-tax-is-part-of-the-war-on-food/
Kit Knightly making the same points I have been making about Labour’s IHT land grab.
We are in a war with our government and people need to wake up.
I think the IHT fiasco is just another example of incompetent politicians not understanding what they are dealing with and the unintended consequences of their actions. Some think that not using land for farming is a good idea https://ukinvestormagazine.co.uk/why-increased-farm-inheritance-tax-will-be-good-for-the-uk-economy/?mc_cid=532a006992&mc_eid=abc92e5fcd Try this rubbish for example.
Off topic but highly important while everyone is talking about the farmers.
Dutch official reveals Covid was a military operation by NATO. I’m sure this is news to nobody who is aware that the US and the DOD runs (before Trump gets in) NATO.
But this is the first I have heard of an ‘official’ on Western Government admitting this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqv2YMn0q2o
It was the response to the pandemic that might have been but not the origin of Covid. It came from one of two labs in Wuhan.
Yes. I deduced that a while ago. In Europe, it was NATO and 5 Eyes countries which imposed the Covid Tyranny; Sweden didn’t.
Why? Because until very recently, Sweden wasn’t in NATO so didn’t have to follow Orders. It was an American Military Operation.
Labour – red in hair and tie!
It seems Farage is a sell-out to Islam.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z0KoQ4Fot4&list=WL&index=2
What people miss is that Car Makers do not actually make the cars from scratch, but assemble pre made component items into a finished article. If a car plant shuts and the jobs are lost, so will the effects be felt by the component suppliers. The ripple effect goes onto, shops, cafes, all the places that those once employed by the car industry go to spend their money. 1 job loss can morph into dozens.
The decline in employment effects a decline in the economics of all areas concerned with life and all it entails.
Sunderland (Nissan) could have voted for a Reform MP; they voted Labour. Like the Welsh, who also continually vote for their own destruction, I have little sympathy.
I’m in Wales and voted Reform, though not sure I would again the way Nigel seems to capitulate to Islam. Anyway, it is mostly in the S Wales Valleys that they are hardened Labour supporters because of the Mining history. But compare the voting to a few years ago, Labour is not as popular as it was.
The UK a global leader??? The UK accounts for approximately 0.164% of the global land area, and not forgetting land is only 30% of the global surface area, with the oceans being a major (temperature dependent) CO2 sink/source. Some leader!
Nothing done in the UK’s Net Zero drive will reduce atmospheric CO2 by one molecule. This is not only because our emissions are minuscule but also because we are not reducing them but are merely offshoring them.
Net Zero is about setting an example for the big emitters to follow. But India and China, who each out more new CO2 every year than our entire annual output, cannot follow. Where are they supposed to offshore their emissions to?
The true Net Zero agenda is not about going green but about going extinct, or at least pre-industrial. It is rooted not in environmentalism but in misanthropy, pessimism, and mental illness.
Strikes, power cuts, inflation, high taxes, capital flight, brain drain, general gloom and doom, soaring debt and public spending, Labour Government.
Yup, that was 1974. Described to a tee.