Rishi Sunak has warned that Britain is facing “a severe recession the likes of which we haven’t seen” as coronavirus cripples the economy.
The chancellor tolled the bell that worse is to come as figures showed a staggering 10 million UK jobs are now directly supported by the government.
Over two million people claimed unemployment benefit and universal credit in the last month with applications rocketing by 69 per cent, new figures covering the first full month of the coronavirus lockdown show.
The data from the Office for National Statistics shows the claimant count climbed by 856,500 to 2.1 million between March and April.Get all the top Scottish politics news sent straight to your Inbox by signing up to our Politics newsletter.We