Chancellor Rishi Sunak has unveiled a £30bn package to help the economy get through the coronavirus outbreak.
He is abolishing business rates for many firms in England, extending sick pay and boosting NHS funding.
He warned of a significant but temporary disruption to the UK economy but vowed: “We will get through this together.”
The Bank of England announced an emergency cut in interest rates just ahead of the Budget on Wednesday.
Mr Sunak, who was promoted to chancellor just four weeks ago after Sajid Javid quit the government, has had to hastily re-write the government’s financial plans to deal with coronavirus.
The measures put in place to mitigate the effect of the coronavirus outbreak include:
- Statutory sick pay for “all those who are advised to self-isolate” even if they have not displayed symptoms
- Business rates for shops, cinemas, restaurants and music venues in England with a rateable value below £51,000 suspended for a year.
- A £500m “hardship fund” to be given to local authorities to help vulnerable people in their areas
- “Fiscal loosening” of £18bn to support the economy this year, taking the total fiscal stimulus to £30bn
- A “temporary coronavirus business interruption loan scheme” for banks to offer loans of up to £1.2m to support small and medium-sized businesses
- The government will meet costs for businesses with fewer than 250 employees of providing statutory sick pay to those off work “due to coronavirus”
- Those on in-work benefits who get ill will be able to “claim from day one instead of day eight”.
The number of coronavirus cases in the UK reached 456 on Wednesday, with a sixth person confirmed to have died after contracting the virus.
The chancellor said that without accounting for the impact of coronavirus, the Office for Budget Responsibility has forecast growth of 1.1% in 2020, 1.8% in 2021 and then 1.5%, 1.3%, and 1.4% in the following years.
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