Coffee House Shots
Isabel Hardman's Sunday Roundup - 28/07/2024
[Music] Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shop's The Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast. I'm Isabelle Hardman and this is The Sunday Round Up. On Monday the new Chancellor Rachel Reeves is expected to announce a £20 billion black hole in the country's finances. Many believe labour is setting the ground for inevitable tax hikes and spending cuts in the autumn, blaming unexpected levels of Tory mismanagement for these decisions. On Sky News this morning, Environment Secretary Steve Reed spoke of a Tory cover-up. It's reported that Rachel Reeves will make a statement on public finances tomorrow. What is it that you know this morning that you didn't know back in June when you drew up your programme for government? Your right, Rachel will be making a statement in the House of Commons tomorrow and she will be open and transparent about what we have found as an incoming government, an incoming set of ministers since we came into our departments. The inheritance from the previous government has been catastrophic. They were spending money like there's no tomorrow and then they called an election, they've run away and they're trying to deny it. It's very important that we get back to open this in public life so we're not going to shy away from what's going wrong and we are determined to take the decisions that will start to rebuild Britain and give people better opportunities. If there's openness in public life, is there an element of, let's call it, Kabuki Theatre here? Here's what Rachel Reeves herself said back in June. She said, "We've got the OBR now. We know things are in a pretty bad state. You don't win at the election to find that out." Yet now you're suddenly going, "Oh my God, they're all these things we didn't know." Was she wrong then or is she just doing theatre now? Well, there were things outside what the OBR had been covering. Let's take one of what I think was the most egregious is the prison's crisis. So we were told by the Conservatives going through the election that there was no need to speculate about the country running out of prison places because they had plans in hand to deal with that. Shabana Mahmood is appointed, the Justice Secretary goes into her department and is immediately told that we're facing critical failure point, which means we run out of prison places as soon as August. So she had to take immediate action to stem the risk that judges would no longer be able to sentence predicted criminals to jail sensitive because we've run out of places. She knew that. In fact, I remember reading her press release about early release in which she said, "More or less exactly that point." There isn't anything new that you didn't. You could not have known. I mean, Trevor not just on that, Trevor, because we now know that the Prime Minister received a letter from senior civil servants the week before he called the election warning him about this critical failure point and that judges would no longer be able to send convicted criminals to prison if they deserved the custodian. But my point is, in your information, we did not have that. We knew that there was a problem growing. I know when I was the Justice Secretary, the Shadow Justice Secretary about a year ago, we were pushing this same point in the House of Commons. The government reassured us again and again and again that we needn't worry that there was sufficient place. But my point is, you, you personally, plus your colleagues, would come in here week after week after week and say, "We don't believe them. It's worse than they're saying." And now suddenly, you're discovering that it's worse than they were saying. It's not only that we didn't know the Prime Minister deliberately covered it up. They covered it up. So now it's a cover-up. It's not that you discover something new, because Paul Johnson said, Paul Johnson in the IFS said, I think, two months ago, in that very seat, "Oh, we're going to discover that there's going to be a 10," I think he said at that point, that point, 10 billion pound black hole. My point is a simple one that actually, it's perfectly a reason before the Chancellor now to say there is a black hole. But you can't possibly maintain that you're surprised, because you spent all your time telling us, don't be surprised. I'll give you another one. So the Rwanda scheme. We believed, because that's what the Conservatives were telling us, that they had spent £400 million to send just four volunteers to Rwanda. Bad enough, you'd think. But if Cooper goes into the home office and finds out the actual spend is £700 million, 75% more. Additional £300 million that they had covered up. Now, I've asked some Conservative MPs, "Did you know about that?" And therefore, we'll complicit in the cover-up, or is it news to you, in which case, it's good that we're now being open and transparent, because once you see the problem, you can deal with the problem, and we want to get away with the politics of denial and cover-up and be open and honest. Let's just talk about... Former Conservative Minister John Glenn defended his party's pledges and said Labour were already breaking their promises. I'll just have one more go at this. I mean, I'm not really talking... I'm not really talking about the problems. I'm talking about arithmetic here. You campaigned on a programme that promised yet more tax cuts. Now, you, John Glenn, were a management consultant. You've got an MBA. So you must have known that the promise was entirely fanciful, given the state of the book. So why do you go along with it? Because it's also about what you're going to choose to do in government to reduce those pressures going forward. And if you embark on welfare reform, reductions in the number of civil servants deliver services better and different in a different way. You can manage a lot. But this is a triumph of hope over experience. No, these ever reduced the number of civil servants to the extent that you promised. I mean, it's never happened. Well, clearly, when we had Covid and had massive pressure on our public services, the numbers rose. But when we went back seven or eight years ago, we were 100,000 fewer than we are now. And the first thing that this government did when they came in is said civil servants can work from home as much as they like. And we want to raise your taxes. The first thing they were briefing into the papers, which was not said during the election campaign, they're breaking their promises. And as I say, the Prime Minister can't even define who working people are. And I know working people here in Sornsbury and across the country who have investments and pensions will be very concerned of what's being speculated upon this weekend. On the BBC, Steve Reed told Victoria Derbyshire that water bosses could face criminal charges over sewage dumping. How many times will they be able to illegally dump sewage in our waterways before they're charged? We're going to work through, I want to work in a much more open and transparent way with stakeholders, with the public, with campaigners. We'll work all that through as a legislation goes through parliament. What I've done already was seven days into my job, I had the water company chief executives in my office, and they signed up to initial package of measures that will start to turn the corner on what we've seen with record levels of illegal sewage dumping in our rivers, lakes and cities. And that's what I'm asking about. And that's what I'm asking about. How many times will water bosses be able to illegally dump sewage before they're charged? We'll be working that through the legislation, and we will consult fully on that as it's brought forward. Do you think it'll be twice or three times in your hour? What I want to do, Victoria, is the public are angry that there doesn't seem to be accountability in the system. Water bosses have got away with paying themselves tens of millions of pounds in bonuses for overseeing catastrophic failure. What I want to do is make accountability back into the system. Well, you say that, but it sounds like you're going to give them a chance from what you've written in the mail on Sunday today. It's like, you're going to let them illegally dump sewage a bit. And then when they've done it a few times, then there might be some kind of criminal charge. What I want to do is clean up how water will do it by making the water bosses face criminal charges if they are responsible for persistence. How many times that's my question? Severe levels of illegal sewage dumping. We will ban the payment of their multi-million-pound bonuses while they're overseeing that kind of failure. We will re-fence customers' money that is earmarked for spending on investing the sewage system. So if it's not spent on that, it will be refunded to customers in a discount on those, on their bills. So you don't know yet how many times you'll be able to illegally do it until they get started? Well, this is an important part of what we're planning to do. By strengthening regulation, by making it more consistent, we can make the sector more investable. And we aim to bring in 88 billion pounds of private sector investment in this parliament alone to start to clean up our water and invest in that infrastructure. It's the second biggest investment in the economy in this entire parliament. It will bring jobs and good wages right across the country and it will allow us to start cleaning up our polluted waterways. Thameswater, as you know, is in serious trouble. Why don't you step in now and temporarily nationalise it as some experts are suggesting? Well, Thameswater remains financially viable. They are seeking to raise the funds that they need moving forwards and we need to give them the space to get on and do that. The head of the Palestinian mission to the UK, Hassan Zonglot, said it was Benjamin Netanyahu, who was delaying a deal for the hostages held by Hamas. Even though the international criminal court accused his Hamas of war crimes, yes, they also accused Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel's defence minister. Yes, they first accused Benjamin Netanyahu and of war crimes too. So you would be willing to work with Hamas. That's what you're saying today. Victoria, for many years, it was Netanyahu who was feeding the division and it was Netanyahu's allowing funding for Hamas thinking that that will maintain the fragmentation and will block the emergence of a Palestinian state. That's number one. Number two, for all these years, it's Netanyahu and the US, sometimes even the UK saying, who should we talk to? The problem is Palestinians are not united. And then when we go and come up with a political vision that allows for a technocratic government, then the question becomes, how do you allow Hamas? We still have an answer, yes, sir. Our unity as a people, the unity of our political system is paramount for the cause of peace and for the cause of establishing a Tuesday solution that the UK and US always espouse. I want to ask you about the more than 100 Israeli hostages that are still being held captive by Hamas. They have to be released now, don't they, for there to be any chance of peace at some point? As Alicia just said, a deal is on the table for many, many months. And as you just heard from the US vice president, Camilla Harris, only two days ago, that the deal is on the table, and Netanyahu must seize it, i.e. Israel's strongest, closest ally, is telling us and Netanyahu, it's in Israel's court. And Hamas needs to seize it too? I think according to the mediators, now Israel must decide, because the deal has been offered to Israel, whereby the first phase will release all the civilian hostages, there will be exchanged. And remember, Victoria, and we need to remember, we have hostages. Israel took more than 4,400, only from the West Bank since the 7th of October, without charge, without trial, the situation in Israeli president for Palestinians, is simply unimaginable. The torture, the murder, the starvation of the prisoners, of the hostages. They should not be called prisoners, of the hostages. So there will be a deal. I think we are prepared for that, but the one thing that's stopping us is Netanyahu's personal calculation. He knows once a deal is done. He's done. And this whole idea that we are after, not Hamas, but the Palestinian people. That's why they are after the shelter houses you earn. They are no longer bombing cities, because they run out of targets. They're bombing people, hiding in shelters. It's about the Palestinian people and the extermination of the Palestinian people. And finally, the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, said people should not be prejudging investigations, after violent scenes between police and members of the public caused a storm this week. Well, he's obviously talking about the individuals who were involved, but what I'm saying is there's an investigation, a criminal investigation going on into that, as there is into the police conduct side of things. And both of those investigations need to do their job, particularly without members of parliament, might I say, prejudging those important investigations. It's one thing, isn't it? People seeing clips on social media and the public reacting to those clips. I understand that. But it's another where members of parliament who should be applying more judgment to these matters, letting the police do their job, piling in and making statements, coming down on one side or the other. And that's the problem these days, isn't it? People are picking sides. When I said before, the truth often is more complex, and it lies in between. And we've no hope, really, if MPs are just going to join in and sort of add to the Ferrari, we need to step back this morning, Trevor. I would have liked more of the footage to come out earlier, but because it's linked to a potential trial, it couldn't. But at least it's out there. People can see it now. They can see that this is a complicated situation. It escalated very quickly. It's a very violent situation. The authorities now need to be given space to do their job. Please can that message. If nothing else get out this morning, everybody take a step back, let them do their job and hopefully it'll be concluded as quickly as possible. That's all for this week. I'm Isabelle Hardman and this podcast was produced by Joe Biddell-Brill. Don't forget to subscribe to the Coffee House Shots 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]