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.
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All this, because they wanted to save a few million a year on NHS funding. In terms of a business economy decision, this has to be one of the greatest bone head decisions in business history.
All this because of Agenda 21 and 30.
I would like to know which category the test and vaccination centres fall under.
There are some workers who have definitely profited from working there, my ex company, Sodexo, deployed my management team to Stanstead airport testing site as managers. I was told that people on the mobile testing unit could earn more than my colleagues who were on their regular salary.
What were they testing -incoming Ilyushins?
Last summer a Test Station Security Guard told me that he was earning far more per hour than when working ‘the doors’ with 13 hour shifts but at least all during the normal working day.
The main topic of the conversation was that he had heard that his company had just had their contract extended to way beyond what was then thought likely to be the time span of the Pandemic.
Anyone who says lockdowns were done to save lives should be forced to explain how the money spent can be justified compared to tripling the NHS budget or whatever, and spending it on treating people who are ill with better drugs etc, doing more screening to catch cancers earlier.
If memory serves correctly NHS Trusts had all existing budget debts cancelled to leave them free to splurge money they didn’t have on PPE, respirators etc.
It was something like £13 billion debt cancelled. Probably the debt was a result of the chronic ongoing underfunding of the NHS by the Conservatives. It is a drop in the ocean in comparison to the billions Boris and co have wasted in the ‘fight’ against the virus…
If you beleive in Modern Monetary Theory as espoused eg in The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton then Governments can wipe out a deficit at a keystroke. Personally I think it’s bonkers but I’m not trained in economics. Any offers?
You can, but it ignores human behaviour. When you start doing that sort of thing you get an endless line of requests for the government to print even more money to do this and that, because it’s “easy” and it would be unreasonable not to. You can print money but you can’t print scarce resources, whether human, raw materials or equipment.
It’s the Wizard Of Oz. Peering behind the curtain.
Smoke and mirrors to control the masses. For their own benefit you see. They need to remain in ignorance.
Magic Money Tree cannot create wealth just rob wealth creators once…
Well yes that’s the other thing: MMT is theft, like any other currency debasement.
How is accommodating your desire to save theft?
Since MMT would say, from a right wing point of view, that we are overtaxed for the size of government we have, and that we should reduce taxes and scrap tax increases, how do you get to that conclusion?
We rob the wealth creators by allowing 3.5 million people without work that want it to languish on the dole queue, by taxing too much.
You can’t wipe out a deficit at a stroke. The deficit is caused by the private sector net saving. If nobody saves anything net, then there will be no deficit. MMT just explains how that comes about as a consequence of the accounting. If people save more than they borrow overall, which they tend to do, then there will be a government deficit. Unsurprisingly over the last year in an economy where nobody is spending much, there is a lot of saving and paying back debt, which means the net savings overall are huge. And that’s why there is a huge deficit. It’s a fairly simple idea you can test for yourself. If government spends £100 then whoever gets that money gets £100 less tax. That person then spends their income elsewhere, less tax, and so on, like a stone skipping across a pond until the money all disappears in tax. Do the maths on that and you’ll find that the total amount of tax across all the transactions will be £100. And that will be the case for any positive tax rate. All that changes is the number of hops. Now do it again, but this time stop half… Read more »
MMT (and QE) rides upon and takes the credibility in government debt and currencies created by responsible traditional fiscal and monetary policy for granted and then turns both on its heads. It can and will only end in a disaster, a currency reset post a hyperinflation. It, like this ridiculous lockdown spending and waste, is only possible now and temporarily because all other major currency nations do it too, resulting in no exchange rate or interest rate pressures for any of them, for a while…. Inflation is already rearing its head so massively that it can’t be manipulated away anymore statistically, as it was done over the last 25 years. The big question is whether central banks will respond to it by raising rates massively again like in the 80s, thereby leading to a quick asset market, financial system and real economic collapse and a depression, but preventing hyperinflation, saving savers and pensioners and prolonging the existence of their currencies for a few more years, until they collapse under the risen debt and interest burden in conjunction with a smaller economy (see Greece) and reset anyway, or whether they will shun those immediate consequences and refrain from raising rates and… Read more »
I find it interesting that both Lucan and Jaybee were marked thumbs down, as their remarks were diametrically opposed.
Lucan describes MMT , Jaybee describes its demise.
Hyperinflation is coming, its baked into the system. There is a world shipping crisis, raw materials and agri indices are going vertically upwards.
Will the world’s CBs react by jacking interest rates, very very doubtful. Instead they will create digi-currencies with -ve rates and constrain their use.
Fiat + Keynes enables a wedge to be driven into what was previously the bourgs and the proles, which has now become black/dark skin vs white, men vs women… (choose a minority and play the victim!), pander to and appease the ‘democratic’ hordes until the piper wants it back with interest. Rinse and repeat. Protect yourselves, because they certainly won’t…
As soon as it stops being an emergency, they have to stop experimental jabbing. The real reason to have never ending variants. All that FAUX concern
Yep.
£372 billion? Really? This manifestly fails to engage with the knock on effects of shutting sectors of the economy down for prolonged periods (including loss of taxation and growth potential). There will not be a jack-in-the-box spring back, there can’t be, that is not how economics works. There might be a dead cat bounce when the doors of enterprise re-open, but then expect the long term casualties to start reporting in. Or is the government also going to start dishing out green start up grants left, right and centre to fiddle the figures? Where does all this money go anyway? The ultra-rich have already mopped up $9trillion of QE worldwide, in the form of stock market jiggery pokery and other privileged dealings. https://archive.is/4o20l# Meanwhile the UK has seen the the state working hand in glove to destroy small business, including the deployment of police, to the benefit of the cartels (such as supermarkets) and online giants (such as Amazon). So will there be a lockdown windfall tax to reflect this inequity….? I think we all know the answer to that one. Once the UK government’s spendthrift sponsorship of its own lockdown power grab is reckoned up, the taxpayer coffers will… Read more »
it’s “like” the welfare state is really welfare for the establishment. Making sure as much money is taken from workers via incomes taxes and economic rent and sent via people who’ll spend it least wisely and thus rest nicely in the accounts of title holders.
This has been illustrated perfectly by furlough. The usual rags such as the Mail and Express habitually moan about benefit scroungers, deliberately missing the whole economic sleight of hand that is taking place.
Note, the benefit recipient does not accrue wealth from welfare benefits, but the rich do, as from all Quantitative Easing (QE) schemes.
I term this process Targeted Micro QE, with the unemployed person being the voluntary but unwitting distributor of QE on behalf of the government (which is arguably a job in itself). All of which, of course, inevitably paves the way to Universal Basic Income, which is coming soon.
Please forgive my cluelessness but what is the difference between Iniversal Basic Income and the payments in place at the moment and why do people fear it so much?
Universal Basic Income
Well it’s a bit of a generalisation but don’t societies tend to function better if most of the population feels like they are making a measurable contribution to that society’s prosperity and functioning? I would not want to be paid to do nothing. Some people might say they would like that, but I don’t think it would be all that healthy for them.
In a nutshell, with UBI will come a wider state imposed conditionality on society as a whole, the limits of which will be set by the government. This could extend (as in the PRC) to the imposition of social credits, with behaviour being regulated/punished through state sanctioned social pressure (social media). Add in a cashless society and the potential to monitor/regulate all one’s financial transactions. Thus UBI is never the recipient’s to spend freely, as with cash.
On top of this UBI will not only further reward corporate/multinational business, as it does now, via directed money flow, but also with a permanent subsidised labour force not far removed from serfdom – the state pays you, you shall work as you are directed deprived of collective bargaining rights.
Such neo-feudalism will find many supporters on both left and right, with IDS doubtless salivating at the prospect.
And this is only the very tip of the tip of the iceberg…..
Ultimately one either values personal freedom or one doesn’t, and this is no longer a clear left-right litmus test, so for some UBI might be wonderful!
Report last week on Hugo Talks, South Australia (I think) considering issuing unemployment benefits and other social security funding via a Card that cannot be used to buy booze, fags and other non essentials. Not a new idea and easily circumvented but it shows the direction of travel.
We’re already well down that road. It’s already being trialled on the young, who are effectively being schooled in socially acceptable spending by their parents:
https://test.gohenry.com/uk/
I have recently come to the conclusion that smart meters and the shift to VOIP are also mere preps and tools for easier social credit punishment.
And with regard to UBI: raise your hand if you believe that Bill, Jeff, Elon and Boris will be happy to see a decent amount of it paid to many people for a long time.
I think, they’d rather see fewer plebs getting as little as possible for as short a time as possible.
Hence the gene therapies and all those other average life expectancy reducing Covid and, soon coming, climate change ‘interventions’.
I have been warding off the smart meter ‘we are installing in your area’ coercion for some time now – but they are bloody persistent. I have the same suspicion of any app, as the corporate / state encroachment into all communications is increasingly (and aggressively) pervasive.
The fly in the UBI ointment right now is the pesky Human Rights Act, which in its current format could be used to prevent at least some of the principles of the UBI system – for example, the state deducts credits for engaging in behaviour which it deems unacceptable, like oh I don’t know, attending a protest perhaps. At the moment a potential breach of Articles 9 10 and 11 (and possibly Article 8), and Article 6 if a decision about credits is imposed without a fair trial. That’s why it’s so important for the HRA to be defended, especially as it is constantly being eroded as the current debacle goes on. China-style UBI is impossible alongside the HRA as we know it.
Qui Bono?
Cui.
Dative singular.
Love from A Pedant.
Anniem amo
Much economic theory was always windy nonsense as a handmaid to capital accumulation. The period from the 2008 crash to now just proves the point.
So we haven’t been able to afford to defend this country properly for years (the first responsibility of the State) but we can afford to squander £372 Bn, three hundred and seventy two thousand million pounds, on a scam, or to be precise on the Scamdemic. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark methinks.
I see that the lifting of restrictions is now unlikely (as if it was going to go ahead anyway), well it appears its us antivaxxers fault. Its just about total compliance (as it has always been) and getting the sheeple to turn on us sceptics to force us to comply. It reminds me of the 1st WW propaganda poster of a child asking his dad what he did in the Great War, daddy why don’t you have the vaccine as I don’t want you to die.
I’m bloody minded at the best of times, but the only way I’m having their monkey gunk is if I’m physically held down.
Im sure the private banking elite are rubbing hands with glee knowing our covid debt is their profit and control for decades to come
UK GDP in 2019 was £2.2trln. £372bln is 17% of that 2019 GDP. UK GDP fell 8% in 2020 to £2.05trln. £372bln is 18.5% of that 2020 GDP- the increase in the government debt/GDP ratio. The £372bln went entirely into that GDP, as spending, and here simplified essentially into the private sector to fill the state ordered Covid destruction hole there. It follows, that the structurally solid UK GDP fell 25% in 2020 without that extra gov. debt financed spending, to £1.678trln. And as the government sector’s spending of 35% of GDP in 2019 basically remained unchanged and unscathed, whilst the private sector making up 65% of spending in 2019 took the full brunt of it, that private sector actually contracted by 10%, from £1.420trln to £1.280trln including the £372bln handouts going to it, and a massive 36%, from 1.420trln to £908bln before them. The ratio of private to public sector spending and their real size then changed from 65% to 54% for the private sector and from 35% to 46% for the public sector. And within that 10/36% destruction of the private sector, the damage was heavily skewed towards certain industries, businesses and people, of course, whilst in the… Read more »
I hate to have to break the bad news folks but guess where the money is going to come from , https://www.ukwealth.tax/ this is what they call predictive programming, but you should know this by now. Anyone with any personal wealth over £500k will be asked to contribute 5% on anything over that to help out. This of course is going to mean the govt :- having a complete tally of ALL your chattels above £3000 , the real time values of it all. the ability to track in real time the sale/ acquisition of assets. those asset rich cash poor will be bankrupted. When all this is combined with the national digital currency and the vax pass , the state will have COMPLETE CONTROL OF YOUR LIVES . When they say “you will own nothing and be happy” that is what they mean. The middle classes are going to be hit with a tsunami of living costs inflation and taxes. They really do intend to “ build back better “ and private property and individual choice will be reserved for the 1% Resist the vax Resist the propaganda Resist the herding to conform lobby MPs to stop this Use… Read more »
372 billion. Of that, I have seen zero pence for the last 12 months so I won’t be returning to the city centre, even if I wanted to. This ‘government’ has destroyed me so I will not, nay, cannot, follow it’s diktats
“Conservatives”
my fanny flaps