The great reckoning for the cost of Covid has yet to come – and Phillip Inman on the job losses caused by Rishi Sunak’s tactics on furlough
Here’s two contradictory datasets: one from the Citizens Advice Bureau, reporting that 600,000 more people are falling into ruinous debt, unable to pay their energy bills; the other from the UK Insolvency Service revealing that individual bankruptcies and ‘debt relief orders’ have fallen over the last year, and dramatically so. Yet both paint an accurate picture of debt in the UK during the pandemic.
The insolvency figures are extraordinary. The number of personal bankruptcies this year – a period of forced business closures, furloughs, rising unemployment – has dropped to the lowest level for a decade. They are running at just one-sixth the level common in 2010. Individual voluntary arrangements (IVAs) are up, but only marginally, rising around 3% compared to with last year.
