Mr. Sebastian Barnes:

The Deputy is absolutely right. The health outcomes are critical. It is encouraging to see the news over the recent phase on how circumstances are improving. There are also big questions about what might happen, for example, in the autumn, and about a second wave. That is critical.

That also leads to the second point about confidence. If the public is reassured about the health situation and the authorities have the health situation well managed even though they are fighting this very nasty virus, that would be helpful for people going out. It also speaks to having the right sort of measures in place so that when people go out, they are confident that places are safe and that they can go about their business. All of that is important.

Beyond that, and even conditional on the health outcomes, there is a lot of uncertainty about what the economic outcomes will be. We discussed, for example, the SMEs. It is quite difficult, with the kind of data that economists look at all the time, to know exactly what the state of the SMEs is and how that sector will recover. It is difficult as well to know in this unprecedented crisis how people will respond to all of this, and the confidence aspect is important. The more the public authorities can do to manage the health situation properly but also restore this confidence and get things moving again, the better.

Part of that is probably about having a plan for the medium term as well, not only for how we get out of the crisis but a vision for where the economy will go, for example, with issues such as climate change and pensions that otherwise might hang over people as a cloud with them not knowing where things are going to head. Having a good, credible plan about that will also be helpful to people in their economic decision-making.