Grant Shapps defends Rishi Sunak's Eat Out to Help Out scheme

Transcript

00:00 Does your present boss deserve the criticism

00:03 that he will no doubt get later on today for his eat out

00:07 to help out scheme?

00:09 Well, look, actually, I think that Rishi Sunak, who

00:13 came forward and saved millions of jobs and millions

00:16 of businesses through his COVID response,

00:21 is actually due a lot of credit.

00:22 Millions of businesses would have gone bust.

00:24 Millions of people would have been out of work

00:26 if it hadn't been for his furlough scheme.

00:28 And schemes like eat out to help out, look,

00:30 it's so easy to look back on things and say,

00:33 oh, what you should have done is this then,

00:35 at this moment in time, with perfect 20/20 hindsight,

00:38 and say what should have been done.

00:40 But these were difficult decisions

00:42 that were being made to stop businesses from going bust.

00:45 And that in itself would have been a real problem.

00:50 So difficult, balanced decisions to make.

00:52 It's actually why you have an inquiry,

00:53 to look into all of these things, public inquiry.

00:55 And so that's what's happening.

00:57 So I think we should let that take its course.