Andrew Bailey, the Governor of the Bank of England, told a British Chambers of Commerce webinar on Tuesday that the Government’s furlough scheme will need a rethink before it ends at the end of October. He said Chancellor Rishi Sunak faces a difficult decision over the scheme and hinted that it may need to become sector-specific.
He went on to say that the resurging pandemic is “extremely difficult” news for the nation and warned that the "hard yards are ahead of us". But he cooled expectations that the Bank of England will deploy negative interest rates in the immediate future. Elsewhere, Martin Beck, of Oxford Economics, predicts the furlough scheme will be kept in place beyond the current October end-date, at least for affected sectors. "Boosting the generosity of existing compensation schemes for firms affected by local lockdowns would be another option,” he adds. Finally, data from payrolls firm XpertHR show the highest number of pay freezes across companies since the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2009.
Read more: The Times
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