£500 voucher to spend in restaurants

[Alex50]

Would you go out to dinner, pub, shopping if the government paid you to do so?

www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jul/05/sunak-considers-500-vouchers-for-all-uk-adults-to-spend-in-covid-hit-firms

@lljkk

Most retailers accept contactless payment these days.

In little towns like mine where most the shoppers are age 50+, I suspect engagement could be poor.

Indeed. I've just been doing some reading about the Chinese system, and whilst the idea worked well in a young, digitally forward city like Hangzhou, where most people have smartphones, it worked less well in areas where this wasn't the case. The problem with just handing out paper vouchers is the potential for theft, and as Mrex says, companies just taking them for future credit. Digital vouchers could be tracked a lot more easily, but would exclude a measurable percentage of the population. One idea was for them to be discounts rather than vouchers, or tied to a minimum spend.

Economically it's a drop in the ocean. It would be a (supposedly) feel good sop,but realistically very hard to make work fairly i imagine.

Can't be the usual contact-less payment system, has to be targetted at eligible types of retailers is the whole point if I understand correctly.

And then you will only want to do part-spends in many places, so needs to be a payment system with its own infrastructure which would be very very expensive to set up, I should think if it worked "at moment of paying" like contactless does now. Besides, contactless is only £30 limit, so probably just mean digital or card payments.

I'm not against the idea in principle, but I don't know how it would be done to be efficient, not abused and achieve stated objectives.

Can't be the usual contact-less payment system, has to be targetted at eligible types of retailers is the whole point if I understand correctly.

The majority of retailers do accept contactless payments though.

And then you will only want to do part-spends in many places, so needs to be a payment system with its own infrastructure which would be very very expensive to set up, I should think if it worked "at moment of paying" like contactless does now.

It would literally be taking money from a balance? No huge infrastructure needed. It would work in the same vein as any other transaction.

Besides, contactless is only £30 limit, so probably just mean digital or card payments

It's actually £45 now. However when you use your phone the limit is quite often set much higher than that

... or maybe I am against in principle, because us taxpayers ultimately would pay for it. But waiting to see details.

Who would pay for the verification procedures/system, to make sure only eligible businesses had registered to receive these payments? There needs to be an infrastructure to validate the recipients, is what I mean and some kind of fraud monitoring. That can't come for free.

Most of our local restaurants are daytime only and pretty empty in evenings in normal times. People age 50+ dominate the clientale.

I wonder if it the system could be done as a subsidy, say up to 50% of the cost of the meal out. That would encourage more visits so be longer term effective.

Wife and I are going out for a dinner later today at a local restaurant - can’t wait 🙂

The thing about percentage subsidies is that it discriminates against people who have literally no room for discretionary spending in their budget who can’t benefit from it whereas people like me could get expensive meals and theatre tickets for half price all year and receive thousands of pounds of benefits unless you capped the total discount receivable per person which would reintroduce all the complexities of the original scheme.

Isn't it true that if you give £500 to the poorest, they spend it all, and this does the most to boost total consumer spending?

Sounds a lot more sensible than comfortable households (like mine) getting a £500 voucher.

Yes that’s normally true lljkk, which is why they’re trying to design a scheme which forces all recipients to spend (on specified sectors) rather than save.

To be honest I would prefer that the money was given directly to the businesses which need it. Or to the people who are in most need of extra money.

We went to the Ivy (brasserie) yesterday and it was fab! I would definitely use the vouchers.

Happy to have a free meal

No ones worried about catching the virus then?

If I get it, I get it. All I can do is take precautions like most other sensible people.

Yes.

I am lucky. I can afford to eat out if I want to. I'd like to be able to donate my £500 to a food bank or scheme where restaurants give left over food to people in need.

I'm not sure how effective this would be if they did issue vouchers, I'd definitely use them!

I'd like to see money going to make life better for the working poor. If this money went on school kit and tech for their DC, meals out and UK breaks for them that'd be lovely. Make work pay.

What about if it went to anyone who has not benefited from any of the other schemes like supermarket workers, carers, cleaners, porters, drivers, bin men, post workers, pharmasists, BT engineers, sewage treatment workers - those who'll be, alongside the rest of us, paying back the debt but are near burn out from having worked all through the crisis and are still working.

I most certainly would. And I wouldn’t save the equivalent, that completely defeats the point 🙈 also agree that it should go to everyone not just the poorest, they’ve already received additional universal credits and free school meal vouchers during the pandemic!

It's a really interesting idea and shows that there is some attempt at creative thinking to dig us out of this mess.

It is an interesting idea. A boost to the ecomony but maybe also to morale? Especially to those who have lost jobs or are struggling and now don't have the luxury of going to restaurants

I actually ate out today. Was rather a novel, not to mention expensive, way to spend a weekday lunch.

Was such a refreshing change from Groundhog Day.

This is only a think tank idea. There is probably about a 1 percent chance the government will actually implement it.

@HandsOffMyRights i suspect quite a few people are going to come to the same conclusion as you.

I don't fancy going out to a restaurant/cafe yet...mainly because I don't fancy potentially having to stay in for 2 weeks afterwards but I'd be very happy to have £500 to spend on non-essential retail.

I went to M&S to buy school uniform on Sunday (first time I'd been in a shop since March) and I had so much fun...they'd spaced all the displays out and it felt very clean and safe.

Could do with it in time for my September holiday!
In all seriousness, it sounds great, but I worry about the bill at the end of it in terms of the deficit, I feel the same about the furlough scheme, despite being furloughed. Someone's got to foot the bill somewhere and I worry it will be our children and us in later life (pension age for example)