Today was the government’s big chance. A chance to show its mettle. A chance to improve our collective resilience to the health and economic impacts of the coronavirus. To protect and reassure an increasingly uneasy populace.

But it has missed that chance. The chequebook might have been waved around more than in recent years, but too much of the same old mean-spirited, laissez-faire thinking was still on display.

The government said in announcing today’s budget that it “stands ready to provide further support, should it be needed”. It is needed. Both to improve our chances of avoiding the worst consequences of the coronavirus, and to begin to address some of the searing injustices of the last decade. A real ‘levelling-up’ to match the prime minister’s promises.

One of the most obvious gaps in our collective resilience is our shredded social security net: there are widespread concerns that the millions who currently get little or no sick pay won’t be able to afford to self-isolate. So what did the Budget have for them?

Not much. For the large numbers of people who don’t have occupational schemes and rely on Statutory Sick Pay (SSP), that remains at £94.25 a week: less than a third of the full-time minimum wage. The 2 million part-time and zero-hours workers who currently don’t qualify for even that payment, still won’t qualify. The 5 million self-employed still won’t qualify either.

Both these groups will be entitled to just £73.10 a week – £59.90 for under-25s – payable through either Universal Credit or Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). Whilst those with children may get more, there are also gaps that mean some will get nothing at all.

The only significant changes are that SSP has become slightly easier to claim without a GP visit, and that SSP and ESA will now cover people from their first day of sickness rather than their fourth or eighth day respectively. Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced a “change” to Universal Credit, but it is merely a confirmation of existing practice, which allows some recipients to continue to get the benefit when they’re sick.

Today’s Budget still leaves millions of relatively hard-up people facing an enormous hit to their income if they are sick or need to self-isolate. And despite Sunak’s boast that this was “the most comprehensive economic responses of any government anywhere in the world, to date”, the measures compare poorly to those introduced by other governments.

Compare Ireland, for example, which has just dropped the contributions requirement on its sickness benefit so that the self-employed and low-paid can get it too. Not only that, it has increased sickness benefit by €100 a week, to €305 a week (around £266). Which is a sum that people could vaguely live on, and comparable to sickness pay and benefit schemes across the rest of Europe.

The UK can and should do something similar – a dramatic hike in both sick-pay rates and eligibility – immediately. Far from hitting the economy, such a patch to the broken sick-pay system would be an economic stabiliser against a major hit on consumer spending, as poorer people tend to spend their money rather than hoard it. Driving the poor into further poverty benefits no one but the loan sharks. Boosting sick pay would ensure that – as Boris Johnson promised last week – no one is “penalised for doing the right thing” in staying at home to protect both the population and the NHS from the virus.

But is the government capable of such a mindset shift, after a decade or more of attacking the sick as shirkers? Even away from today’s disappointing Budget, there are worrying signs it may not be. The Times reports that advice for those with colds to self-isolate has not been introduced yet “because modelling suggests it would seem like crying wolf”, adding that “there are concerns that some could use it as an excuse to avoid work”. The Times article appears to suggest that the modelling derives from the controversial ‘Nudge Unit’.