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The Environment Secretary was quizzed on the impact of ending or making significant changes to the furlough scheme. The Sky News host argued it could impact “tens of thousands” of jobs across the UK.

Mr Dixon said: “The Institute of Directors in their survey says that if you move towards this scheme where employers will be asked to pay 20 percent of that 80 percent cost of furloughing a member of staff….the survey says that 25 percent of companies think that will lead to redundancies.

“There will be possibly tens of thousands across the country.

“The big question here is, do you think as a Government in terms of getting the general economy up and running, is that a price worth paying?”

Mr Eustice replied: “Well look I think the most important thing is we need those businesses that can get back to work to do so.

“That includes factories, food outlets places like McDonald’s and KFC they can return to work.

“Also, we are going to tentatively start allowing retail to reopen.

“What we actually want businesses to be doing is planning carefully how they can get return their staff to work safely and then reopen again.

“The way for those businesses to avoid costs and having to attribute to the furlough scheme in the longer term is to take those steps to get back to working and operating again.

“That is what we want them to be thinking about.”

Earlier this month Chancellor Rishi Sunak warned that the UK could face a “significant recession” following the British economy shrinking by 2 percent in the first quarter of 2020.

Data published by the Office of National Statistics showed that GDP fell by 2 percent across the first three months of 2020.

GDP fell by 5.8 percent solely in March 2020.

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Mr Sunak said: “The first quarter was that bad based on just a few days of the impact of coronavirus in March.

“So it is very likely that the UK is facing a significant recession at the moment and this year.”

He added: “I think it is premature right now to speculate too far into the future.

“We are living in a time of economic uncertainty, that is very clear.”

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