Covid inquiry – live: George Osborne claims austerity had ‘positive’ effect on UK’s ability to withstand Covid

We are pausing our live updates for this afternoon, you can read more on the Covid inquiry here.

Former chancellor George Osborne has now finished giving evidence to the Covid inquiry.

In the final question, Mr Osborne was asked whether government economic pandemic planning focused on sickness absence - not the effects of lockdowns or social distancing.

Mr Osborne said he agreed this is the case, but said no Treasury in the world prepared for a lockdown.

He said: “Through the [austerity] programme we pursued we created the fiscal space so we could end up spending £370bn to help people deal with the adverse effects that the lockdown introduced.”

Asked if NHS funding “simply wasn’t enough,” Osborne replied: “No, I don’t accept that.”

He continued: “What I accept is that you could spend more money on the NHS... but you have to make a calculation balancing the resources each of those services get and the central calculation which every household has to make is what can we actually afford.

“I think we prioritised health.”

George Osborne has argued that his austerity programme while chancellor made Britain better prepared to weather the coronavirus pandemic.

Inquiry barrister Kate Blackwell KC asked: “Do you agree by the time Covid-19 hit the consequences of austerity were a depleted health and social care capacity and rising inequality in the UK?”

Mr Osborne said: “Most certainly not, I completely reject that.

“I would say if we had not done that Britain would have been more exposed, not just to future things like the coronavirus pandemic, but indeed to the fiscal crisis which very rapidly followed in countries across Europe...”

He said he needed to repair the “seriously impaired public finances” following the “massive economic shock” of 2008.

“If we had not had a clear plan to put the public finances on a sustainable path then Britain might have experienced a fiscal crisis, we would not have had the fiscal space to deal with the coronavirus pandemic when it hit...”

George Osborne reiterated his defence of the austerity measures he oversaw as chancellor between 2010 and 2016.

Giving evidence at the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, he said: “The one thing I’m sure of is there’s no point having a contingency plan you can’t pay for.

“And absolutely central to all of this is the ability of your economy and your public finances to flex in a crisis.”

When a crisis hits, Mr Osborne said: “You need to be able to respond… and throw large amounts of public funds at the problem… without a fiscal or financial crisis.”

Mr Osborne said he believes this happened in the UK during the Covid pandemic.

He added: “Poorer countries in the world were not able to afford lockdowns or provide loans for businesses to stay in operation.”

Asked “Should there have been a plan, blueprint or playbook” from the Treasury when something like the pandemic occurred, Osborne replied: “In hindsight, yes”.

“There was no planning for a lockdown,” George Osbourne has said, but questioned whether such a plan would have led to a better furlough scheme anyway.

The UK had a plan for an influenza pandemic, he said.

He added that the Treasury did not plan to ask the public to stay home for months.

The former chancellor told the inquiry: “You’re absolutely right there was no planning done by the Treasury for asking the entire population to stay at home for months and months on end, depriving large sectors of the economy like hospitality for months,” he says.

“If someone had said ‘you the UK government should be preparing for a lockdown that might last for months’ then I’ve no doubt the Treasury would’ve developed the schemes it did around furlough and loans.”

He added that “it isn’t fair to blame someone directly.”

Austerity had a “positive” effect on the UK’s ability to withstand the Covid-19 pandemic, former chancellor George Osborne has claimed.

In his witness statement submitted to the Covid inquiry, Mr Osborne said austerity had a positive effect because it meant public finances recovered.

“Reducing the deficit and placing debt as a percentage of GDP on a downward path was also essential to rebuild fiscal space to provide scope to respond to future economic shocks,” Mr Osborne said.

“I have no doubt that taking those steps to repair the UK’s public finances in the years following the financial crisis of 2008/09 had a material and positive effect on the UK’s ability to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic,” he continued.

George Osborne is giving evidence to the Covid inquiry today after a doctor’s union said the former chancellor must be “taken to task” over austerity-era decisions that “left us so unprepared” for the pandemic.