General Election Promises: Tax and Spend?
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 28 November 2019
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Politicians are busy making big electoral promises. Some of them are to be funded by taxing wealthier people. But will the next chancellor be able to get the money they need from high earners, or will they need to find new ways of funding their ambitions?
David Aaronovitch discovers, with his guests, what wealth consists of and who today has the means to contribute more to the UK tax kitty and how they could pay it. How many are there of them? And, importantly, are they the people we think they are? Might we be surprised to discover who qualifies as wealthy?
CONTRIBUTORS:
Torsten Bell, chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, an independent think-tank that focuses on the living standards of those people on low and middle incomes.
John Whiting, CBE, former tax director of the Office of Tax Simplification
Pat Thane, Visiting Professor in History at Birkbeck, University of London and an expert on ageing, the welfare state and pensions
Merryn Somerset Webb, editor-in-chief of the personal finance magazine, MoneyWeek, and a columnist for the money section of FT Weekend.
Producer Simon Coates Editor Jasper Corbett
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:04.9 | Welcome to the briefing room with me, David O'Ronovich. |
| 0:08.0 | There's an election on and everyone is making big promises. |
| 0:11.7 | Some of them are to be funded by taxing the rich. |
| 0:14.6 | But who are the rich? |
| 0:16.7 | People who earn more? |
| 0:18.3 | People who own more. |
| 0:20.0 | Is a Londoner on 40K really richer than a Cumbrian on 30k? |
| 0:25.3 | And will the next Chancellor be able to get the money they need from high earners, or will they |
| 0:30.2 | have to find new ways of funding their ambitions? Experts on tax and wealth are making their way |
| 0:36.1 | into the briefing room. Let's find out what they have to say. |
| 0:39.5 | And if you enjoy this podcast, you're likely to enjoy some of our other episodes, |
| 0:43.2 | including ones on Brexit, meat eating, and Syria. |
| 0:46.6 | You can find them all on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:53.7 | Music Never in the field of electioneering has so much been promised to so many at the apparent cost to so few. |
| 1:06.6 | Well, not for a while anyway. But there's a problem. We've been told there'll be additional borrowing, |
| 1:12.2 | and in the case of Labour, that the wealthy will pay some more. But who exactly are the wealthy? |
| 1:18.3 | Can the people we tend to think of as the rich meet the cost of the politician's ambitions? |
| 1:23.7 | And if they can't, who else might pay and in what ways? |
| 1:30.0 | The answers may not be the ones you're expecting, |
| 1:33.0 | so let's step inside the briefing room and find out. |
| 1:41.8 | First, the sound of a voter discovering he's better off than he thought, |
... |
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