Furlough becomes false economy if extended by Rishi Sunak – The Yorkshire Post says

Chancellor Rishi Sunak is resisting calls to extend his Furlough scheme.Chancellor Rishi Sunak is resisting calls to extend his Furlough scheme.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak is resisting calls to extend his Furlough scheme.
THE SNP – and Labour – missed a vital point after taking Chancellor Rishi Sunak to task for not announcing an extension to his Furlough scheme during a high-profile visit to Scotland to promote the virtues and value of the Union at this time of crisis.

Rarely, if ever, satisfied, they overlook the fact that the whole of the United Kingdom – including Scotland – have benefitted from a policy that has seen £33.8bn of public money used to support 9.6 million workers.

Always intended to be a short-term measure when the Government needed to pay people to stay at home, the county would be facing a far greater economic calamity if it was not for this measure.

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And while Mr Sunak would like to be in a position to extend it beyond October’s cut-off point, he knows that it will be a false economy and the challenge is creating new opportunities for those who might, as a consequence, find themselves out of work.

Chanclelor Rishi Sunak during a visit to Glasgow.Chanclelor Rishi Sunak during a visit to Glasgow.
Chanclelor Rishi Sunak during a visit to Glasgow.

On this, it would perhaps be more helpful if the Opposition parties put their more constructive ideas to the Chancellor, a politician who takes his duties very seriously indeed, rather than simply playing to the public and populist gallery by calling for more ‘blank cheques’ to be signed off by the Treasury in order to mask their own dearth of innovation and ideas.

Just as they will challenge Mr Sunak at the time of the next Budget and Comprehensive Spending Review over the scale of the country’s indebtedness, and how he intends to reduce the deficit, it is also disingenuous of Labour, the SNP and Lib Dems not to offer specifics of their own on how and where they would make savings too.

Editor’s note: first and foremost - and rarely have I written down these words with more sincerity - I hope this finds you well.

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Almost certainly you are here because you value the quality and the integrity of the journalism produced by The Yorkshire Post’s journalists - almost all of which live alongside you in Yorkshire, spending the wages they earn with Yorkshire businesses - who last year took this title to the industry watchdog’s Most Trusted Newspaper in Britain accolade.

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Sincerely. Thank you.

James Mitchinson

Editor

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