The Prime Minister has announced that we should all avoid pubs, restaurants, theatres and cinemas.  There is still little indication how such businesses and those similarly affected by Covid-19 are supposed to survive without customers.

Widespread failure of businesses will lead to wholesale unemployment, a failure to honour debt and potentially even the collapse of the whole financial system.  The Government will, at the very least, suffer a loss of tax revenue and thus be in a worse position to manage.  At worst, it may not even be able to borrow its way through the crisis period.

Business loans are not enough.  The Government needs, in the short term, to meet the fixed costs of enterprises whose revenue streams it has, for very understandable reasons, strangled.  That means:

·         Paying the salaries of affected workers who cannot otherwise be sustained through a new Temporary Retrenchment Scheme

·         Paying the rents, rates and other fixed costs of these businesses

We U.K taxpayers are, at this time, willing to buy our cake and not eat it.  Take from us in tax the money that we would have spent in these establishments.  Take from us the money we will not be spending on travel.  We know that the books must balance eventually.  It’s a small price to pay to stave off economic collapse.

No redundancies, no insolvency.  Pay the self-employed and gig economy workers based on past tax records.  If people could meet their obligations before, give them that financial artificial lung to get them through until they are once again able to breathe unaided.