Hello and welcome to inside briefing. I'm Bronwyn Maddox. Our economic emergency has only just begun. That was what Rishi Sunak told MPs this week when he set out his spending review.

And the eye-watering numbers backed up his warning.

280 billion pounds already spent on the coronavirus crisis.

Unemployment set to rise to 7.5%.

Growth lowest since 1709.

The deficit approaching 400 billion pounds.

We're going to take a close look at what we learned from the Chancellor's statement. And as the country prepares to come out of lockdown with a promise of a five-day easing of restrictions for Christmas,

and it's going to go back into some form of regional tiers,

we're going to look into arguments over the economic costs of placing parts of the country into tighter restrictions

than others. Big economic questions, some big IFG economic writers to answer them. I'm delighted to

be joined in the studio today by chief economist Gemma Tetlow. Hi Gemma. Hello. That's senior economist Tom Pope.

Tom, great to have you with us. Hello. An IFG senior fellow, Giles Wilkes

often on this podcast. Hi, Giles. Hi there, Bronman. Okay, let's start with the spending review.

Gemma, what did Rishi Sunak set out to do? Did he do it? I'd say he set out to do three things

yesterday. One, as the name Spending Review suggests, was to lay out

spending plans for next year, giving departments the money they need to cope with the ongoing

costs of COVID and to do their normal activities. The second thing was that having decided not to do

a multi-year spending review because things are just too uncertain at the moment.

He was not supposed to be setting out longer-term spending plans for any departments.

Finally, his job with the new forecast from the Office of Budget Responsibility was to set the scene for the difficult tax and spending choices that are coming later in

this Parliament, but that he didn't

say anything about yesterday. On the first, I think he succeeded. He set out plans for all departments

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