It can be difficult to appreciate the scale of public funding utilised to support the UK economy during the pandemic.
The numbers rung up by the Bank of England’s Asset Purchase Facility, which ultimately financed government programmes such as the furlough scheme, peaked at £895bn towards the end of 2021. This is equivalent to six years of NHS England resource spending.
Not all of this went directly to businesses. Nonetheless, Treasury support represented an unprecedented peacetime transfer of capital from the public to the private sector.
