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