Virus takes center stage in budget speech

Britain's public spending also high on the agenda for Chancellor Rishi Sunak

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak has unveiled the first budget since Prime Minister Boris Johnson's election victory, against a backdrop of turmoil unprecedented in recent years.

Sunak only became chancellor less than a month ago, following Sajid Javid's resignation, and was tasked with delivering the first budget since Britain left the European Union at the end of January. Since then, however, the novel coronavirus outbreak has become the world's dominant political and economic issue.

Monday's stock market slump and figures released by the Office for National Statistics revealing that the United Kingdom's economy did not grow at all in January just added to his burden of expectation.

Beforehand, Sunak had told Cabinet colleagues the virus outbreak would be "front and center in our minds" and he duly began his speech by saying "I want to get straight to the issue on everybody's mind. Coronavirus/COVID-19", calling it "the key challenge facing our country today, but it is not the only one."

He said it was likely there would be "temporary disruption" to the economy but that the government's response would be "temporary, timely and targeted" and designed to have "maximum impact".

Aside from the virus, the budget's main substance was a 600-billion-pound ($775 billion) infrastructure program during the next five years, to benefit "every region and nation of the UK", pushing net public investment to its highest real-terms level since 1955.

Investment will be made in road and rail building projects, and following recent devastating flooding across the country, flood defense expenditure will double. Broadband rollout and the abolition of value added tax on women's sanitary products were also mentioned.

"We are at the beginning of a new era in this country ... a future where we unleash the inventiveness and creativity and all British people," he concluded.

"This is a budget delivered in challenging times. We will rise to this moment, we will get through it together. This is just the start."

Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn welcomed the government's actions against the novel coronavirus but added that previous policies meant the country faced it with public services "on their knees" and a "flat-lining economy".

"Having ruthlessly forced down the living standards and life chances of millions of our people for a decade, the talk of leveling up is a cruel joke," said the Labour Party leader.

"The reality is that this is a budget which has an admission of failure-an admission that austerity has been a failed experiment. It didn't solve our economic problems, but made them worse, that held back our own recovery and failed even in its own terms."

Earlier in the day, the Bank of England reduced interest rates from 0.75 percent to 0.25 percent, back to the lowest level in history, a move the bank's outgoing governor, Mark Carney, said was deliberately timed for budget day to have "maximum impact".

"The Bank of England's role is to help UK businesses and households manage through an economic shock that could prove large and sharp, but should be temporary," he said.

The full economic impact of the virus remained unclear, he added, suggesting