In his third and final appearance at the covid inquiry, the former chancellor was questioned by the inquiry's lawyer, Richard Wright KC, on his choice to roll out the government backed bounce back loans.

Sunak said: ‘To go back to those couple of weeks, I used the word “existential” - we were facing a situation where half of SMEs had less than a month’s cash in the bank - you were facing widespread business Armageddon, that’s why there was an imperative to act on scale and at pace to prevent a catastrophic loss of business and jobs.

‘There was an imperative to get this right, and get the money out to the businesses as soon as possible, we didn’t have the luxury of weeks, never mind months.’

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