Coffee House Shots
Isabel Hardman's Sunday Roundup - 21/07/2024
'Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the spectators daily politics podcast. I'm Isabelle Hardman and this is the Sunday Roundup.' The new Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves gave an interview with Laura Coonsburg this morning. In which she emphasised the mess, she says the Conservatives have left behind and restated that Labour would not spend outside of its fiscal rules. Coonsburg asked Reeves whether she would be prepared to ignore the recommendations of the independent pay review bodies which have called for a public sector pay rise of 5.5%. We understand that the pay review bodies have recommended a rise of 5.5%. Now that is more than people in this building and number 11 we're expecting. It's more than the former government had budgeted for, it's more than you had budgeted for. Would you as a Chancellor who's just said you want to be honest and people who have to be prepared for tough decisions, would you be prepared to ignore the recommendations of the independent bodies and risk a period of strikes with the unions by not giving them the pay rises they seek? I really value public service workers in our schools, in our hospitals, in our police as well. At the moment we are looking at those pay review body recommendations, doing the analysis, we will work with public sector workers on that and later this month we will make announcements around public sector pay when we do that full analysis of the public finances and public spending. But we also know that there is a cost to not settling, a cost of further industrial action, a cost in terms of the challenge that we face in recruiting, retaining doctors and nurses and teachers as well. But we will do it in a proper way and make sure that the sums are up. With Labour not lifting the two-child benefit cap, Koonsburg asked Reeves what the government was doing to help the poorest in the country. You talked during the election campaign, I remember hearing you mention it lots of times about meeting people who genuinely were struggling to pay for the weekly shop, struggling to put food on the table. But yet there is nothing that we can see in the first few weeks of the decisions that you've made. That right now immediately puts money in the pockets of the least well off in this country, the very poorest. I'm not seeing anything from this Labour government that will immediately put money in their pocket. Look, I'm not claiming that we can be able to turn everything around straight away but let me give you two examples of things that were in the King's speech, creating GB Energy, a wholly publicly owned energy company to bring people's energy bills down and also our plans to insulate more homes and to reduce people's energy bills. But second, the New Deal for working people so that we can turn the minimum wage into a real living wage and ban exploitative CRR contracts to give security to working people. Those are just two examples around reducing energy bills and ensuring dignity at work and better wages and more security. But those are long-term reforms which may or may not improve lives for working people. You hope that they will. But right now, as you sit here as the brand new Labour Chancellor, there is nothing that you are doing that will immediately put money into the pockets of working people and there is one thing that lots of your colleagues wish you would do which would put money into the pockets of many families who are hard pressed by lifting the bars on benefits being paid to families who have more than two children. It's not just a few pockets of backbenchers. There are serious Labour figures like Andy Burnham who want you to do this. Gordon Brown wants you to do this. You could lift half a million children out of relative poverty straight away if you made that choice. Laura, it costs more than £3 billion a year and we were really clear during the election that we were not going to make spending commitments without being able to say where the money was going to come from. And if I said to you now, we're going to make those changes this year or next year or the year after. You would rightly say, where's the money going to come from that? If we're not able to say where the money is going to come from, we can't promise to do it. Shadow Chancellor Jeremy Hunt described Reeves's depiction of her dire economic inheritance as absolute nonsense and said she was laying the ground for tax rises. Rachel Reeves told us she's angry at what you left behind. She said the public finances are dire and that you fudged tough decisions and ran away. She has a point, doesn't she? First of all, I wish Rachel Reeves well on a personal level. I think she has qualities that could make her a good Chancellor. And there are things that she said that I welcome. I welcome what she wants to do on pensions, which you were just talking about with Stephanie. I welcome what she wants to do on planning reform. But what is absolute nonsense is this business of the worst economic inheritance since the Second World War? I mean, you only need to look at the last time a government changed hands between parties in 2010. Compared to then, inflation is nearly half what it was. We have then we had markets collapsing now. We have the fastest growth in the G7. We have unemployment nearly half what it was then. It's a very transformed picture. And I think the reason that she's doing this is that she wants to lay the ground for tax rises. Now, perfectly legitimate for a new government to come in and say they want to spend more and tax more. Every Labour government in history has done that, but she should have been honest about that before the election rather than trying to spring it on the start of the election. You were trying to suggest what she might do and we don't have a crystal ball, but just to pick you up on that, you know, government debt is the highest it has been since 1962. Government debt is nearly at the same size of the whole of the economy. The unemployment rate actually recently has started ticking up again. Economic inactivity has started ticking up again. So people not in work who could be. And all of our viewers this morning, Jeremy Hunt, know that in the last few years, under successive Conservative governments, the economy has been bumping along the bottom and people have felt terribly hard up. So you're not going to sit here this morning surely and say actually what you left behind was old peaches and cream. Not at all. We faced in the last 14 years three massive global shocks, the pandemic, the energy shock clearing up after the financial crisis. And despite those pressures, we grew faster than France, Germany, Italy, Japan, many other similar countries. Only in some of the very recent business. On Sky News, Trevor Phillips spoke to T's value mayor Ben Halchin, who was the only Conservative mayor left in the country. Halchin spoke positively about the start of his working relationship with Starmer. Well, one of the first steps that the new government took was to bring together the Metro mayors and regional leaders. You were the only tour in the room, I think. Did you feel welcome and was there genuine concern for the devolved government? I did feel welcome, actually. And I think it was very telling of the Prime Minister that probably 24, 48 hours of the first full day in office. He invited all of the Metro mayors into Downing Street, something that while the Conservative government were very supportive of devolution and actually started it under George Osborne and David Cameron, there was never a collective meeting of mayors in Downing Street. And this Prime Minister has gone further to formalise that relationship with those mayors across the country by setting up the Council of Regions and Nations, where we'll have that formal seat at the top table to be able to feed in the concerns that we have from our local areas. So I think it was a really positive start. I think it's fair to say that the Prime Minister and this government recognise that mayors across the country are absolutely essential if he wants to achieve his growth goals, that he has set very clearly in the manifesto and as part of his government, he doesn't want to borrow more, he doesn't want to cut services, he doesn't want to increase taxes other than where he set them out in the manifesto. He needs to unleash growth and he was very clear in saying the only way that the government can succeed is if he allows mayor to succeed. So it was a really positive start generally, but also from my point of view, it was the only Tory mayor left at the moment. It was nice to see the Prime Minister inviting me before that meeting to have a one-on-one meeting with him. I didn't, I'd never known kiss down before, we'd never met before and it was nice for him to hold out that olive branch and say that he wanted to work with me. And I was very clear with him, he's the Prime Minister of this country and if he succeeds then the country succeeds and I'll work with anybody to help my area succeed as well. So I think it's a good start both at a personal level to work with this Labour government to try and get things done and secondly I think it's a really positive thing that they're doubling down on devolution. Finally, Cun spoke to violinist and Edinburgh International Festival Director Nicola Bernadetti who argued that the expressive arts should be a vital part of education for everyone. Do you think the government and even you know, taxpayers have a role in trying to make this something that's available for anyone who's interested? I have always advocated that music and the expressive arts and creativity are part of a first-class education for everyone should be. I think the question we have to ask is do we value that as a civic pillar? Do we value that as a part of a civilisation that we want to see you not just be maintained and sustained but really prosper and grow? And obviously with the political landscape at the moment, a moment of real change and so many new characters that we as artists and cultural advocates can communicate with and speak to directly. I'm excited to see that be more sort of included in the fold of what is vital for education. Have you got that a message to this new government? I always do, yes. We are at a time where problems need to be solved and they can't be solved through just protecting what's there because that just results in stagnation. We need the ultimate creativity in our young people to imagine their way out of where we are and into something new and in order to do that you have to speak to the invisible parts of who we are, so our thoughts and our feelings and our style of communication and creativity. Does that mean in brass tacks, more money for kids education in schools? Absolutely. Sorry, I couldn't even let you finish your sentence. Absolutely. For music education, for that wider creative education, but also how that falls into the arts organisations that are putting on the performances, that are keeping the concert halls open, that are making tickets affordable for anyone and everyone to be able to attend. That's all for this week. I'm Isabelle Hargman and this podcast was produced by Joe Biddell-Brill. Don't forget to subscribe to the Coffee House show's podcast on the iTunes Store. And if you enjoyed this podcast, do subscribe to our daily evening blend email. It's a free roundup of all the political news each day along with analysis and a diary on what to expect next. Just go to spectator.co.uk/blend. Thanks for listening and do join us again next week. [Music]