Engineering SMEs come to the rescue

Former PM Theresa May denied the existence of a 'Magic Money Tree' in 2017 but her successor Boris Johnson and his chancellor Rishi Sunak knew exactly where to find it in 2020.

Forced into unplanned spending to cope with the Covid-19 crisis, the government was estimated by the National Audit Office to have spent £210bn during the first six months of the pandemic.

Out of necessity, funds were released for a raft of measures including the procurement of PPE for front line healthcare workers, the design and build of new ventilators, the much-criticised NHS Test and Trace programme, furlough and funding to support the self-employed and businesses struggling to cope with government-imposed lockdown conditions.

The cost of spending has inevitable consequences and Sunak’s Spending Review in November 2020 brought the financial cost of Covid-19 into sharp focus. Referring to predictions from the Office of Budget Responsibility he told parliament that unemployment would peak at around 2.6 million in the second quarter of 2021 and that economic output is not expected to return to pre-crisis levels until the fourth quarter of 2022.