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A Leading former financier who now lives in Devon having founded Salcombe Brewery has said the furlough scheme set up in response to the pandemic has been a "tremendous success" 鈥� but firms must now wean themselves off the "drug" of public money.

John Tiner, who founded South Hams' Salcombe Brewery after buying out the micro-brewery Quercus in 2016, is a former chairman of the Financial Services Authority and has enjoyed a notable career in the city.

Now aged 64, Mr Tiner said the furlough scheme has been "vitally important" for business during the past 18 months, and that its administration deserves more credit than it has received.

With businesses now getting back to their feet, he said the Treasury must begin winding down the scheme in order to avoid placing further strain on the economy.

鈥淥n the financial side I think that the Treasury and Rishi Sunak have done really well,鈥� he said. 鈥淚n those very early days, when they started talking about this scheme to pay workers to pay a good percentage of their salary to stay at home, which became known as furlough, I thought that was a great idea and vitally important for British business.

鈥淵ou could always pick holes, but they got there 鈥� and I always thought administratively it was going to fall over. I thought that the administrative tools to delivery that were just not going to be in place.

鈥淔or our brewery, I wondered when we were going to get the chance to submit those applications, and get that money, and it was very efficiently dealt with by HMRC. I think that was a tremendous success and doesn鈥檛 get very much credit.

鈥淭o keep furlough running was important 鈥� not for us, as we鈥檝e had everybody back since before reopening in April 鈥� but some companies have got used to the drug of the furlough, and at some point the Treasury need to bring that to a halt as it鈥檚 not a long-term cost that the economy could bear.

鈥淏ut it was right to do it, and if they had to borrow to finance that, then it was the right thing to do 鈥� borrowing costs are next to nothing 鈥� and as long as our credit rating remains strong then we are going to be able to refinance that over time."

Salcombe Brewery has had its full workforce back since April when many parts of the economy were reopened, and Mr Tiner said he was able to work out ways of maintaining cashflow without resorting to the Government-backed loans schemes.

He said: 鈥淭he loans schemes have been good, and provided a working capital lifeline, but of course the danger with those is that they have to be repaid.

鈥淲e didn鈥檛 tap into the loan schemes because I wanted to protect the cashflow of the business for when we came out. I didn鈥檛 want to have the strain of thinking we鈥檝e got big repayments to make, I would rather work out different ways to finance working capital.鈥�

But he added: 鈥淚t鈥檚 got a bit of a tone of quantitative easing in the financial crisis of 2008, because the whole issue is how do central banks get off QE and is it going to give rise to a credit problem, or inflation.鈥�