A £9 BILLION package of support will see the Government give millions of self-employed people a grant worth up to £2,500 a month to help them cope with the effects of coronavirus.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak said the scheme which will be open for at least three months, will cover 80% of a self-employed person's average monthly profits.

But it may not be available until June and will only be available to those who have a tax return for 2019, meaning the newly self-employed will be ineligible.

And Mr Sunak warned that the self-employed could face tax hikes in the future as part of the effort to "right the ship" and repair the battered public finances after the coronavirus crisis is over.

Winchester MP Steve Brine, speaking to BBC Radio 4 today before Mr Sunak's announcement, said: "The problem is acute. We are talking 5m people at least and for many people their work has vanished overnight. For many that is not just theirs it's the household income because you often have partners working together, both self-employed, in the same endeavour.

"They are not wealthy people. The HMRC say that in two-thirds of cases the profits are less than £10,000 a year. They were struggling before. Now they are facing ruin."

Mr Brine said he was looking for simplicity, fairness and universality, an equivalent response ot the support for people in work.

"It needs fairness so it achieves parity with PAYE the 27 million. I said in the House of Commons I can see why the lifeboat set sail later than the PAYE one but it needs to be more universal than targeted."

Mr Sunak's scheme will be open to those with a trading profit of less than £50,000 in 2018-19 or an average trading profit of less than £50,000 from 2016-17, 2017-18 and 2018-19.

To qualify, more than half of their income in these periods must come from self-employment.

Up to 3.8 million people will qualify for support, with average monthly payments expected to be £940 per person.

Mr Sunak said the scheme, which will last for at least three months, "is one of the most generous in the world".

"It targets support to those who need help most, offering the self-employed the same level of support as those in work."

He said the measure covers 95% of people who receive the majority of their income from self-employment.

But in a hint that the self-employed could be asked to pay more to the taxman in future he said it was "now much harder to justify" the tax breaks on offer to the self-employed if they were receiving the same level of state support.

He said everyone would be "chipping in together to right the ship afterwards" once the crisis is over.