Ball was speaking following a rise in unemployment of 131,000 between September and November last year.

He said: “Knowledge, skills and productive capacity – the crystallised value residing in good trained workforces, is a precious thing and damaging in the extreme when lost in swingeing job cuts.

“As with the bank rescue, the government must be prepared to do what a few months ago would have been unthinkable in terms of supporting employers to keep their employees in place.”

Ball has recommended that the government puts a ‘Job Preserving Agenda’ in place to offer more support to employers.

These include even more pressure to be put on banks to open up lines of credit to businesses, reduction in National Insurance Contributions (NICs) and corporation tax for employers who put staff on part-time work or allow them to go on sabbaticals, rather than firing them.

He has also called for employers to be given a longer of period of time to pay their VAT or NICs, or turn them into a loan with the tax office, that can be charged interest on and paid back at a later date.

As well as ensuring that bad debt insurance is available and affordable for companies, there would also be a new option introducing payment protection so that businesses have to abide by the credit terms and don’t leave smaller companies at risk when their suppliers want to lengthen their payment period.

Ball added: “When vacancies have fallen so dramatically and recruitment freezes have been imposed or are being kept in place to see whether conditions worsen or pick up, everything possible must be done to keep people in work – and help must be given to those who fall out of it.”

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