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Good Morning. Rishi Sunak is announcing today what he calls his winter economy plan, which will explain what will be done to support jobs and businesses when the licensing plan ends at the end of next month. He has also canceled the budget that was due in the fall (by my count, the fourth time the Boris Johnson administration has postponed a budget) and today’s announcement is deemed of budgetary significance. In fact, it will probably turn out much larger. In a typical year, a budget is considered powerful if you cut or increase spending by £ 5 billion or more. The licensing plan, announced outside of a budget, has cost the Treasury £ 39 billion.
But that’s only a fraction of the total cost of the Covid crisis for the treasury. Today the Institute of Government thinktank has released a report saying that “Covid-19 is likely already costing the UK government £ 317bn, in an increase in public borrowing, in 2020/21 alone”. This chart explains where those numbers come from.
Here’s our preview of Sunak’s statement by Larry Elliott and Richard Partington.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10.10 am: Suella Braverman, the attorney general, answers questions in the Commons.
Morning: Latest weekly NHS Test and Trace performance statistics released.
After 12 pm: Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, delivers his Commons statement on new support for jobs and business.
12.20 h: Nicola Sturgeon answers the Prime Minister’s questions in the Scottish Parliament.
Politics Live has doubled as the UK’s coronavirus live blog for some time and given the way the Covid crisis overshadows everything, this will continue for the foreseeable future. We will also cover political stories that do not belong to Covid, but today we will focus heavily on Sunak’s statement and the reaction to it.
Here is my colleague Graeme ValuesLive business blog. Graeme will contribute here later as we covered Sunak’s announcement.
Here’s our global coronavirus live blog.
I try to monitor comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read all of them. If you have a direct question, put “Andrew” somewhere and you’re more likely to find it. I try to answer questions and if they are of general interest I will post the question and answer above the line (ATL), although I cannot promise to do this for everyone.
If you want to get my attention quickly, it’s probably best to use Twitter. I’m in @ AndrewGorrión.
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