Rishi Sunak: Why there's no simple trade off between the economy and health
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The atrium of Her Majesty's Treasury on a sunny day would ordinarily be packed.
Today, the chancellor Rishi Sunak, walked to the camera alone, socially distanced, but extremely engaged in trying to balance an economy-wide cash crunch with what the government's purse can stand against a background of the most shocking economic charts seen by any chancellor for a century.
What does he say to those voices increasingly anxious about the damage being sustained by the economy?
"We absolutely need a thriving economy, not least because it provides people with their jobs, their incomes and pays for our public services. But the best way in the long term to ensure that is to get control of the virus now, we set out five tests.
"Once those tests have been met, we can start thinking about gradually refining social and economic restrictions," the chancellor told me.
'Unrealistic'
So, getting control of the virus is still the priority.
But what will this new normal look like for workers, parents, travellers in offices, schools and on airplanes?
"It will be a process, it will not be a binary event where suddenly everything is back to normal. That would be unrealistic. It will be a gradual process.
"We are prepared to put in place a set of measures that will help refine those social and economic restrictions to help us get our lives back to normal as quickly as practically possible whilst maintaining protection for the NHS," Mr Sunak says.
Protect health to protect the economy is the government's message
But still the sheer scale of the impact on the economy is extraordinary.
Asked if there was any guarantee of a rapid "V-shaped" bounce back on the economy, the chancellor said it was "very clear that the economy is going to take a significant hit in the short term".
But he said the totality of the support efforts "would help as many businesses as possible so that we can bounce back as quickly as possible".
'Control'
We took our cameras in to the HMRC call centre in Leeds where much of the work of the taxpayer-backed wage bill for four million workers is being done.
The chancellor said: "Never before have we been able to do something of this magnitude in such a short space of time."
It's not the end of the economic rescue schemes. They are needed in this "new normal" for the economy - which looks set to last for months.
For now, the priority is public health, and controlling the pandemic.
Without public confidence in that, consumers will not go to shops and workers will not return to offices.
That means for HM Treasury, there is no contradiction between protecting health and protecting the economy.
- Published26 March 2020
