The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves has been widely trailing this month’s budget and the difficult decisions she’ll have to make in just under two weeks time. This is being taken as code for tax rises and a possible break in Labour’s manifesto pledge with a rise in income tax. She’s said one of the key reasons for this is that the government's official forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility or OBR, is likely to lower its UK productivity growth forecast for the coming years. So why is UK productivity a problem and what can be done to improve it? Guests:
Chris Giles, Economics Commentator, The Financial Times
Helen Miller, Director, Institute for Fiscal Studies
Duncan Weldon, economist and author
Greg Thwaites, Research Director, Resolution Foundation.Presenter: David Aaronovitch
Producers: Caroline Bayley, Cordelia Hemming, Kirsteen Knight
Production co-ordinator: Maria Ogundele
Sound engineers: Rod Farguhar and James Beard
Editor: Richard Vadon
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28:43
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28:43
What's happening in Venezuela?
Something is going in the southern Caribbean. The world’s largest aircraft carrier - the American USS Gerald R Ford- is on its way to the region. Small boats said to belong to Venezuelan drug smugglers are being blown up by the US military. Old US bases are being de-mothballed. And there’s media talk of Trump-induced regime change in Caracas, with Venezuela’s authoritarian, leftist president Nicolas Maduro in the crosshairs. In this week's Briefing Room, David Aaronovitch and guests ask what this military show of strength is really about and what it mean for the region? Guests: Will Grant, BBC Mexico, Central America and Cuba Correspondent.
Jeremy McDermott, co-founder and co-director of InSight Crime, a Colombia-based think tank that studies organised crime in the Americas.
Dr Christopher Sabatini, Senior Fellow for Latin America at Chatham House
Dr Annette Idler, Associate Professor in Global Security at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford. Presenter: David Aaronovitch
Producers: Caroline Bayley, Kirsteen Knight and Cordelia Hemming
Production co-ordinator: Maria Ogundele
Sound Engineer: Gareth Jones
Editor: Richard Vadon
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28:21
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28:21
How should we handle historic public inquiries?
When a disaster or serious event happens, such as the Grenfell Tower fire, the Manchester Arena terrorist attack or the Covid pandemic, you can be pretty sure that a public inquiry will follow. They’re popular with the public as a means of investigating serious state failure. And for Governments they can be a good way of kicking a difficult issue into the long grass, as usually by the time the inquiry is finished a different set of politicians will have to deal with the report.There are currently 25 public inquiries in progress in the UK today - the most ever, with six announced so far this year. They range from one into Scottish child abuse, which is the longest current inquiry, to another into a police restraint death which has just lost its chair and the lawyers working for the inquiry, to Covid 19 - the largest currently underway. And which by the end of June this year had cost 177 million pounds. David Aaronovitch and guests discuss how these public inquiries work, what they achieve and who, if anyone, benefits from them?Guests:Judith Moritz: BBC Special Correspondent
Deborah Coles, Executive Director, INQUEST
Emma Norris, Director of Policy and Politics at IPPR think tank,
Professor Lucy Easthope, emergency planner and responder and visiting Professor at the Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath. Presenter: David Aaronovitch
Producers: Caroline Bayley, Kirsteen Knight, Cordelia Hemming.
Sound engineer: Duncan Hannant
Editor: Richard Vadon.
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28:48
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28:48
Is there a crash coming?
Some of the biggest figures in finance, from the CEO of JPMorganChase to the Governor of the Bank of England, have been warning of potential shocks to the global economy. As excitement continues to build about the transformative potential of Artificial Intelligence, the US stock market has boomed, potentially forming a fragile bubble. Meanwhile, recent bankruptcies in America have raised worries that a rapid growth in lending by private companies (so-called shadow banks) might be built on shaky ground - and have invoked memories of the subprime mortgage debacle that kicked off the Great Financial Crisis in 2007. And if that wasn’t enough, the threat that Donald Trump might reignite his tariff-driven trade war still looms over the global economy.So how worried should we be? David Aaronovitch speaks to the top experts to find out.Guests:
Katie Martin, markets columnist at the Financial Times
Duncan Weldon, economist and author of Blood and Treasure
Simon French, Chief Economist and Head of Research at investment company Panmure LiberumPresenter: David Aaronovitch
Producers: Nathan Gower, Kirsteen Knight
Editor: Richard Vadon
Programme Coordinator: Maria Ogundele
Sound Engineer: Duncan Hannant
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44:14
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44:14
Is the UK in a data crisis?
As Rachel Reeves approaches a tricky budget, her job has got that much harder. Some of our most fundamental economic data, statistics that policymakers are used to accepting at face value, suddenly have major question marks over their accuracy.The UK’s top stats agency, the Office for National Statistics, finds itself under considerable pressure as falling response rates to its surveys leave politicians flying blind.
David Aaronovitch asks what this means for government decisions and how the ONS can rebuild confidence in its most vital statistics.Guests:
Georgina Sturge, research affiliate at the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford
Professor Denise Lievesley, former Principal of Green Templeton College, Oxford
Chris Giles, economics commentator at the Financial Times.
Peter Lynn, Professor of Survey Methodology at the University of EssexPresenter: David Aaronovitch
Production co-ordinator: Maria Ogundele
Producers: Nathan Gower, Kirsteen Knight, Cordelia Hemming
Studio engineer: Duncan Hannant
Editor: Richard Vadon
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