A former chancellor warned the economic impact of corornavirus will be "far, far worse" than the 2008 banking crash.
Alistair Darling, who served under Gordon Brown when several banks had to be rescued by the taxpayer, said the UK was already in a "very deep recession".
The former Scottish Labour MP predicted that unemployment would start to rise in August despite the UK Government's furlough scheme.
His comments came as MSPs heard today the Scottish economy could be worse-hit than the UK as a whole because of its reliance upon tourism and North Sea oil - two sectors already shedding jobs.
Darling said the collapse in 2008 had been caused by a "fracture to the banking system that could be fixed, albeit at huge cost and political controversy at the time".
He said the UK Government had to make a similar intervention to protect jobs when furlough came to an end.
"What will happen in August, when the government moves to a situation where employers begin to share the cost, is you will find that employers will say 'is this job really going to be around," he told the BBC.
"That is when when you will start to see unemployment rise, which is why I think the government needs to plan for that now.
"We can't go back to what it was like in the 1980s when people were simply dumped on the dole - the government has got a role to play here."
Holyrood's finance committee was warned today key sectors of the Scottish economy, such as North Sea oil and gas and the tourism and hospitality industries could be amongst those hardest hit.
Economics experts Mairi Spowage, deputy director of the Fraser of Allander Institute think-tank, said the North Sea sector had been "severely impacted" by Covid-19, with trade body Oil and Gas UK warning up to 20,000 jobs could lost.
The academic warned this would have a "significant impact" on the economy of Scotland's north east - and on Scotland as a whole.
She added the tourism and hospitality sector is "more prevalent in Scotland than the UK as whole, so there is likely to be more impact."
