LONDON (Reuters) - Britain’s government has underwritten 45 billion pounds ($56 billion) of borrowing by businesses hit by the coronavirus and spent more than 27 billion pounds so far to support jobs, finance ministry figures showed on Tuesday.

Total spending under the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, which supports 9.4 million jobs and is the costliest government coronavirus measure, rose to 27.4 billion pounds as of July 5 from 25.5 billion pounds a week earlier.

State-backed lending to small businesses - which receives a 100% government guarantee - rose to 30.93 billion pounds. Lending to medium-sized and large firms increased to 11.49 billion pounds and 2.58 billion pounds respectively in two programmes which offer an 80% guarantee to lenders.

($1 = 0.8015 pounds)