Anneliese Dodds
Main Page: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)Department Debates - View all Anneliese Dodds's debates with the HM Treasury
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Anneliese Dodds Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Rishi Sunak
As ever, my right hon. Friend makes an excellent point. He is right about the damage to not only non-covid health outcomes but people’s jobs and livelihoods and the long-term damage that that will cause to all our health outcomes. With regard to projections, he will know that both the Office for Budget Responsibility and the International Monetary Fund project 3% scarring, which will mean our economy potentially being £70 billion to £80 billion smaller in the future than it otherwise would have been. As he rightly says, that will obviously have an impact on our ability to fund public services and protect people’s jobs and livelihoods.
Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)
Last week, when the Prime Minister was asked whether a circuit breaker is likely, he said, “I rule out nothing”. Does the Chancellor rule it out—yes or no?
Anneliese Dodds
That appears to be slightly different from the message we received from the Chancellor last week. This morning, a member of the Monetary Policy Committee stated that
“the bulk of spending reductions are due to restrictions that people voluntarily impose on themselves”,
and that
“higher virus prevalence is associated with weaker economic performance.”
Research suggests that not undertaking a circuit breaker now could cost our economy an additional £110 billion—that is based on IMF figures, by the way—due to changes in behaviour that people make to avoid contracting the virus and the knock-on impact of those on economic output. What is the Chancellor’s estimate of the cost of not undertaking a circuit breaker and continuing with this rolling programme of regional restrictions?
Rishi Sunak
The hon. Lady talks about rolling programmes. It is clear that the Labour party believes that we should have a rolling programme of national lockdowns. That would be enormously damaging for people’s jobs and livelihoods, causing unnecessary pain and suffering in parts of the country where virus prevalence is low. A localised approach is the best approach.