Rishi Sunak will announce today a multibillion-pound package of support for the economy in an attempt to avoid mass redundancies this winter.
The chancellor’s measures will include wage subsidies for part-time workers, VAT cuts and more loans for struggling businesses.
Mr Sunak will set out his “winter economy plan” in the Commons. It is expected to feature a German-style subsidy scheme in which the government would help to pay the wages of people returning to work on a part-time basis.
The system is designed to encourage companies to keep on workers in viable jobs while ensuring that others are not retained in “zombie posts” that exist only because of the government’s furlough scheme, which ends on October 31.
“We will always be honest with people
