The potential effect of our current stasis on jobs is particularly worrying

I know someone who is an administrator in a large international company with offices round the world. That person has just been furloughed. So, until June, the firm will pay only 20% of their salary, and British taxpayers will pick up the other 80%. The only condition is that the employee does no work at all.

It wasn’t the government’s aim to pay people not to work. Nor that poorly paid local taxpayers should support well-paid international professionals.

Nor that the scheme should be so cynically exploited. In this case, it is only the firm’s UK workers that are being furloughed. That’s because our government’s scheme is so much more generous than those of other countries. This allows multinationals to shift their costs between countries — and get the locals to pay 80% of the bills.

The potential effect on jobs is particularly worrying. Multinationals who furlough British employees will probably shift their work to employees in other countries. When the furlough period is over, will they really want the cost and hassle of moving it back again? Perhaps not.

Of course, the government was pressured to act quickly. But I fear that, in its haste, it may have allowed British taxpayers to be exploited; and may have precipitated the movement of jobs out of Britain.

The quicker we restore economic normality, the better.