Westminster had come under fire for not initially setting out clear guidelines for the self-employed, but Sunak’s provisions will attempt to compensate for the weeks of uncertainty that many small business owners had endured.
But just how much damage will the Coronavirus Pandemic ultimately do to the UK’s economy? Political Commentator Owen Reed gave his views on the matter.
Sputnik: Do Rishi Sunak's emergency measures go far enough to protect the self-employed and other workers in the country?
Owen Reed: It’s unprecedented what they are doing; no government has ever waded into public life this much in British history, these are such unprecedented times.
For the government to step in and pay eighty percent of people’s wages; that’s incredible, because it takes a lot of hard work to get the systems up and running, and I know that people are worried about the timescale, we are looking at the end of April for businesses to actually get anything, and for the self-employed it’s the end of June.
There are concerns about the timescale, as people need hard cash right now to pay their rent and to pay their bills, so there are problems and there were always going to be, as governments are inefficient.
I’m a Conservative and I believe in small governments, but I think that the British government is doing their best, and for the crisis that we are in; they really are doing well.
Sputnik: Could we see delays to payment similar to what happened with the rollout of Universal Credit? How could the Government avoid this?
Owen Reed: I think the government is going to do everything it can to not have a repeat of Universal Credit, I do think that they have learnt from their mistakes, and this is a new government in a sense, it’s the same MPs and the same Conservative Party, but there are different people at the top.
Hopefully they can get on top of it and make sure there are no problems. When governments are bringing out new policies, especially such a vast policy as this; there always will be problems, which is not good as people do need hard cash, but like anything with our government, it is going to take time.
Sputnik: How badly will the British Economy be affected by the Coronavirus Pandemic in the long run?
Owen Reed: I genuinely think that this is going to be the worst financial crisis that we’ve seen in one hundred years, this is unprecedented, never before have we had to cut down on so much of the economy, we’ve shut down everything in a sense.
Even looking at just the automotive industry, looking at how the jobs and supply chains that are going to be affected, looking at everything linked to that, that will cause problems for the economy, let alone shutting down all the retail stores and everything else, this is really going to hit us hard for a good while.
