Chancellor Rishi Sunak has responded to criticism from businesses that support they need to help them survive the coronavirus crisis has been too slow in coming.
Following today's report from watchdog the Office for Budget Responsibility that the economy could shrink by 35%, Mr Sunak warned there would be more tough times ahead.
The Government has announced a series of packages to support businesses, including grants and loans and the furlough scheme. But some businesses have criticised the speed at which those packages have been rolled out.
Speaking at today's Downing Street press briefing, Mr Sunak said: "We need to make sure that the interventions we’re putting in place reach the people that they’re designed to help.
"In terms of grants to small businesses, that money has left Central Government and gone to local government, who are administering that grant scheme. I think that around a third of it had already been dispersed to businesses, about £3-4bn.
"But there is still obviously more to go. I’ve spoken to the Local Government Secretary about that and he’s intensified his efforts to make sure we can get that money out of the door as fast as possible.
"In terms of the loans, there has been an enormous improvement from where we were at the end of the week before last when there was about 1,000 loans issued. That number is now up I think four times to the end of last week, and in terms of millions going out the door, it’s about five times.
"The changes we made are making a difference. I’m grateful to all the bank staff who have worked over the Easter weekend to help work through the backlog of applications they had. That will see an acceleration in those numbers in the coming days but we’re keeping a careful eye on that and I’m in close contact with the bank CEOs."
Questioned on when firms might see money for furloughed workers, Mr Sunak said: "On the furlough scheme, what we said when I announced this scheme was that we’ve never something like this in the UK before.
"As we’ve seen from the OBR report today, it potentially might cover millions of people and we had to built a brand new system from scratch to handle that. That’s what is dictating the timescale.
"The team has been working night and day since the announcement to get it up and running.
"I always said the scheme would be up and running by the end of April. That’s our intention and where we are at the moment is that we’re on track to deliver that. The system is built and we’re in the process of testing that with small groups of employers.
"It will open on April 20 for applications and then there is a period of several days between submitting applications and receiving cash."
Mr Sunak added that calls for the Government to take on 100% of the risk of the coronavirus business loans - as is happening in some other countries - had not been ruled out, but Ministers would have to be sure “it was the right interventions for us”.
