01/02/2025

The Week in Westminster

BBC

Government

4.2 • 239 Ratings

🗓️ 1 February 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Caroline Wheeler from The Sunday Times assesses the latest developments at Westminster.

Following Rachel Reeves' speech setting out a series of major announcements on infrastructure projects, including backing plans for a third runway at Heathrow Airport, Caroline speaks to Labour MP, Josh Simons and crossbench peer, Richard Harrington, who chairs the manufacturers organisation Made UK about how to achieve growth in the UK economy.

On the fifth anniversary of the UK’s official departure from the EU, the chair of the Foreign Affairs select committee Emily Thornberry and the former Conservative MP and leader of the House of Commons, Penny Mordaunt discuss the state of play in EU-UK relations.

The Conservative peer, Charlotte Owen is campaigning to stop the rise of deep fake online pornography and she discusses this with Caroline and "Jodie", a victim of deep fake porn.

And, the Speaker of the House of Commons Sir Lindsay Hoyle explains the importance of marking Holocaust Memorial Day and the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau in parliament.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:04.8	This is Caroline Wheeler from the Sunday Times with The Week in Westminster.
0:09.3	One word dominated the political agenda this week as Rachel Reeves fired the starting gun on her dash for growth.
0:16.7	The Chancellor delivered her first major speech since the budget, aimed at turbocharging the ailing economy.
0:23.4	Promising to go further and faster,
0:25.5	she gave her backing to a third runway at London's Heathrow Airport,
0:29.7	and she announced plans to transform the area between Oxford and Cambridge
0:33.4	into Europe's Silicon Valley,
0:35.7	with science parks and hundreds of thousands of new homes.
0:39.3	For too long we have accepted low expectations and accepted decline.
0:45.0	We no longer have to do that. We can do so much better.
0:50.3	Low growth is not our destiny.
0:53.1	But with questions still hanging over last autumn's budget statement,
0:56.9	the jury is out on whether the changes announced this week
0:59.4	will propel Britain into the growth fast loan.
1:02.5	This was the Conservative Party leader,
1:04.5	Kemi Badernock, at Prime Minister's Questions,
1:06.8	just after the speech.
1:08.4	This morning, the Chancellor embraced a series of Conservative policies,
1:12.6	although many are welcomed, they will take years to deliver.
1:16.7	When...
1:21.6	Mr. Speaker, when conservatives left office,
	...

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