“There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen,” as Lenin once said, and never have those words been so apt. Tonight’s announcement of a new “self-employed income-support scheme” completes an impressive response package from the government for workers, alongside last week’s “job retention scheme” for employees. Together, the two schemes protect up to 80% of individual average earnings or profits for those eligible for up to three months, and at a cost that is expected to easily run into the tens of billions. In the space of just 120 hours, the UK has travelled from being one of the most liberal advanced economies in the world to one where the state is prepared to underwrite large swathes of earned income with a blank cheque, and for months on end. Yet for all the talk of unprecedented measures, some things don’t change. Millions remain left out of the government’s economic response to the pandemic, and for the most part they are the same communities who have been neglected again and again over the past decade. The two major schemes announced to date have significant holes. All employees who have lost their job since the outset of social distancing, or who will do so before the end of April, are cast adrift. And those that see their employers cut their hours but not their entire job, will not be picked up by the schemes either. Self-employed workers will have to survive more than two months with little additional protection – beyond entitlement to temporary tax deferral and loans – until the new income protection scheme is operational from the beginning of June. For many, that won’t come soon enough to keep them afloat – and they will instead have to turn to the UK’s threadbare social security system, joining the millions who are already reliant on either universal credit or our legacy benefit system. These are not mere speculative or marginal gripes. In just nine days, almost 500,000 people have had to apply for universal credit. The system, already fraught with error and failings, is now straining under the pressure. Those that are able to get through the digital queues that stretch into the hundreds of thousands will be met with one of the weakest safety nets among advanced economies globally, and in the UK’s own postwar history. As of last year, total out-of-work payments received by UK employees were on average around 34% of their previous in-work income – the third lowest among 35 OECD advanced economies. Just before the crisis hit, the main adult unemployment payment was equivalent to 15% of average earnings – less than at any time since the creation of the welfare state in 1948. It is true that universal credit has been temporarily strengthened in response to the present crisis, with an increase in the main adult payment by around £20 per week. But this £7bn injection of cash amounts to just one fifth of the cuts to welfare seen since 2010. Few people can truly survive off the 90-odd quid a week that awaits those whose finances have been crippled by the present recession – and this was as true for the disabled and unemployed before this month, as it will be true for everyone over the coming weeks. The chancellor will have plenty of plaudits for today’s announcement, and many of them will be justified. But you can’t simply rebuild a safety net in a week after destroying it for a decade. The interventions to date are as unprecedented as they are welcome. But they are also incomplete. The job is not finished. The next move must see Rishi Sunak properly reinforce our country’s safety net, not just for the next three months but for the coming decades as well.