British Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged to “do whatever it takes” to support UK businesses on Wednesday and help them bounce back from the coronavirus pandemic as the country heads into its second lockdown.
Mr Johnson thanked businesses for their “heroic efforts” to persevere through the crisis and said the autumn lockdown measures will end on December 2, when they are set to expire.
"We will do whatever it takes to back British business, because I know that when the recovery comes, and it will come, it will happen entirely thanks to the efforts of the people who are watching me now," he said in a pre-recorded video address to the Confederation of British Industry annual conference.
Britain’s economic output slumped by 20 per cent during the first lockdown in the second quarter of this year, the biggest decline of any major advanced economy.
While the second shutdown, starting on Thursday, will be less restrictive, there will still be a 12 per cent hit on gross domestic product in November, according to the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
In his address to the UK parliament on Wednesday, Mr Johnson vowed to get the country started again in December.
"We will then, I hope very much, be able to get this country going again, to get businesses, to get shops open again in the run up to Christmas," he said.
Mr Johnson told the CBI conference that the “nightmare” of Covid and a second lockdown was necessary to get the R-rate down, to protect the country’s National Health Service and to save lives.
He thanked British businesses for their enterprise during the crisis, from fashion houses that switched to making PPE equipment to manufacturers, such as Formula One racing car makers and vacuum cleaner companies that “turned their hand at phenomenal speed” to make ventilators.
"It's thanks to the British technical innovation that we are now in a far better position than we were during the first wave," he said.
He also pointed to British healthcare innovation with trials of drugs, such as the steroid dexamethasone, used to treat intensive care patients, and the prospect of a vaccine in the first quarter of next year with several British companies "among the front runners".
The new rapid turnaround testing programme in Liverpool and the manufacture of tests in the UK will help to get the economy moving again, Mr Johnson said.
“And as we do that, we will be with you with British business, as we have been throughout with over £200 billion worth of support already, coronavirus bills, furlough, you name it, bounce back loans, we will do whatever it takes to back British business.
“You [British business] will drive our recovery, you will create the jobs you will give young people the opportunities they're looking for. And our job in government here in number 10 is to use every tool of government to unite and level up across the whole UK."
That, he said, translates into more than £600bn of investment in high speed rail, superfast broadband, and helping young people get on the property ladder with long-term, fixed rate mortgages. There will also be investment in a green industrial revolution, with hundreds of thousands of jobs created, as well moves to address “the yawning gap” in the productivity of the cities and regions of this country.
Mr Johnson later said he wanted to pay particular tribute to an entrepreneur who has opened the world’s biggest underground trampoline centre in a disused coal mine in Wales.
“No matter how deep the hole you think you're in, you can always bounce back. And that is what we will do together,” he said.
“The door here in number 10 is always open … Let's get through this crisis and bounce back better next year.”
Dame Carolyn Fairbairn, director-general of the CBI, said it was good to see Mr Johnson’s recognition of “how incredibly challenging the pandemic is for business”.
“A lot of people would have heard him say that the lockdown will end at the beginning of December," she said. "That would be incredibly helpful [and] the commitment to mass testing is something that we have asked for.”
British finance minister Rishi Sunak will make a general statement on the government's Covid-19 support scheme to tackle a second wave of the coronavirus crisis on Thursday, Mr Johnson told parliament on Wednesday.
