Rishi Sunak today announced a wave of new measures designed to keep the UK economy afloat over the winter months as the Chancellor pinned his hopes of avoiding massive job losses on a wage subsidy scheme which will replace furlough. Mr Sunak's new Jobs Support Scheme will see the Government top up the pay of people who can only work part-time in 'viable jobs'. The multi-billion pound package of support also included further VAT cuts for the hospitality and retail sectors and the extension of emergency loan schemes for struggling businesses. Mr Sunak said the UK 'must endure and live with the uncertainty of the moment' and that means 'learning our new limits' but he insisted 'o ur lives can no longer be put on hold'. The closure of the Government's furlough scheme at the end of October has sparked dire warnings of waves of redundancies in the coming months but the Treasury has now decided to focus its fiscal firepower on trying to save jobs which have a future rather than 'zombie' ones which do not. Mr Sunak said the UK must 'face up to the trade offs and hard choices coronavirus presents' and that 'as the economy reopens it is fundamentally wrong to hold people in jobs that only exist inside the furlough'. However, Paul Johnson from the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank, said the new scheme is 'significantly less generous' than furlough and 'it is clear that many jobs will be lost over the coming months'.