U.K.’s Rishi Sunak Hits Back at Suggestion Eat Out Scheme Spread Virus
Rishi #Rishi
(Bloomberg) — U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak rejected the idea that his flagship program to boost struggling restaurants helped spread the coronavirus over the summer.
“I would be, I guess, cautious about jumping to simplistic conclusions,” Sunak said on Sky News on Tuesday. “It’s incredibly difficult to pinpoint at such a granular level exactly the cause of transmission.”
Rishi Sunak
Photographer: Leon Neal – WPA Pool /Getty Images
On Sunday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the BBC’s Andrew Marr program that the Eat Out to Help Out initiative — which paid people up to 10 pounds ($13) per person for a meal in a restaurant in a bid to protect hospitality jobs — might have helped the transmission of the disease.
“Insofar as that scheme may have helped to spread the virus, obviously we need to counteract that and we need to counteract that with the discipline and the measures that we’re proposing,” Johnson said.
But Sunak did not see a cause-and-effect relationship. He said that incidence of the virus has been lower in areas like southwest England, where there was significant take-up of the offer.
Virus Resurgence
The government is now trying to suppress a resurgence of the virus as the country heads into the winter months, including by imposing new restrictions on hospitality.
Sunak Sees ‘Hard Choices’ With Warning on U.K. Expenditure
Sunak told BBC TV on Monday that a 10 p.m. curfew on pubs and restaurants “could” help slow transmission, a half-hearted endorsement of a policy that’s sparked the ire of rank-and-file Conservative members of Parliament ahead of an expected vote in the House of Commons on Wednesday.
In a series of morning interviews, Sunak told told BBC radio ministers “fully intend to deliver” on the Tory party’s manifesto promises — though he declined to specifically reiterate the pledge not to raise income tax, VAT or National Insurance. Economists say it will be difficult to raise significant amounts of tax revenue without touching the three levies.
Sunak also:
Told LBC radio there won’t be a budget this year but there will be one by the start of AprilTold the BBC his priority for now is protecting jobs, but that after the pandemic, his attention will shift to getting the public finances in orderTold BBC TV that the alternative to local lockdown measures would be “blanket national interventions” which “clearly wouldn’t be appropriate and we should try and avoid that if we can”Defended his social media branding on Sky, saying “I want people to know what we’re up to so that they can question it”Said he doesn’t “envy” Johnson doing his job. Asked on TalkRadio about his greater public popularity than Johnson’s, he remarked: “I wouldn’t get carried away with very short term things; What goes up, comes down, that’s inevitable in life”Told TalkRadio it’s “sad” to see the once “thriving” London reduced to “a shadow of its former self” because of the pandemic
Speaking to lawmakers on Tuesday, the head of the lobby group that represents the hospitality industry said Eat Out to Help Out, which applied for three days a week during August, provided a welcome boost but warned that revenue has since fallen well below levels needed for businesses to cover their costs.
“Thirteen days of good trading, and they were good trading, doesn’t offset 60% losses on the year to date, which is what we’re at looking at now,” Kate Nicholls, chief executive officer of UKHospitality, told the Treasury Committee. “So it got people back to break-even; it didn’t get them back to solvency, and now they’ve gone further backwards.”
The 10 p.m. curfew, she said, has had a “severe and devastating impact,” leaving businesses facing a “very bleak winter” during what is normally a busy time of the year.
(Adds comment from hospitality industry trade body in last three paragraphs.)
For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.