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Business leaders have praised the Chancellor for his “bold” measures, pledging to work with the Government to boost jobs and growth.

Stephen Phipson, chief executive of manufacturing organisation Make UK, said: “Industry will applaud the Chancellor’s bold intent which will spur the process of rebuilding business confidence and healing the economy.

“The emphasis on protecting jobs which already exist, whilst safeguarding and preparing young people with the skills for future jobs which may not yet have been invented is a strategy that companies will fully support.

“This is not the beginning of the end of this crisis, however, but perhaps the end of the beginning as far as the economy is concerned.” 

Dame Carolyn Fairbairn, director general of the CBI, agreed. “Flattening the daunting unemployment curve about to hit our country could not be more important,” she said. “Today’s jobs plan is an important step forward.”

Measures including the “imaginative voucher scheme” will be “warmly welcomed by many businesses and help give consumers confidence to spend”, she added, although urged “more immediate direct support for firms, from grants to further business rates relief”.

Mike Cherry, chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses, said: “Whilst the majority of small businesses have been supported by the Chancellor’s emergency measures, some have not.

“We need the Government to spell out how it will help the newly self-employed and company directors who have once again been overlooked this afternoon, and have now been left without help for more than 100 days during this incredibly difficult period.”