Hunt’s Budget - will it make a difference?
Radical with Amol Rajan
BBC
4.5 • 917 Ratings
🗓️ 6 March 2024
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Has Jeremy Hunt done enough with his Budget to change the political and economic weather?
Amol and Nick assess the politics of the Chancellor’s speech – possibly his last major intervention before a general election.
And they’re joined by Andy Haldane, a former chief economist at the Bank of England and now chief executive of the Royal Society of Arts, to look at what difference the economic measures will make.
Episodes of The Today Podcast are weekly and watch out for bonus episodes. Subscribe on BBC Sounds to get Amol and Nick's take on the biggest stories of the week, with insights from behind the scenes at the UK's most influential radio news programme.
If you would like a question answering, get in touch by sending us a message or voice note via WhatsApp to +44 330 123 4346 or email us Today@bbc.co.uk
The Today Podcast is hosted by Amol Rajan and Nick Robinson, both presenters of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the UK’s most influential radio news programme.
Amol was the BBC’s media editor for six years and is the former editor of the Independent, he’s also the current presenter of University Challenge. Nick has presented the Today programme since 2015, he was the BBC’s political editor for ten years before that and also previously worked as ITV’s political editor.
The senior producer is Tom Smithard, the producers are Hazel Morgan and Joe Wilkinson. The editor is Louisa Lewis. The executive producer is Owenna Griffiths. Technical production from Dafydd Evans and digital production from Elliot Ryder.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.0 | Well, this podcast is coming to you a day early this week because Nick and I have just watched the budget from Jeremy Hunt. |
| 0:10.8 | It was an almost romantic experience, wasn't it, Nick? |
| 0:13.4 | We don't get to watch budgets together very often because of our working hours. |
| 0:16.5 | You speak for yourself. |
| 0:19.0 | It is fascinating to watch it in real time |
| 0:21.5 | and trying to work out what the impact really is going to be. |
| 0:26.8 | That's what we're talking about today. |
| 0:28.2 | Hunt's budget, will it make a difference? |
| 0:30.7 | Let's do it. |
| 0:31.3 | We're doing it. It's a mole and it's Nick in the Today podcast studio. |
| 0:46.6 | Well, I had an instinctive reaction. |
| 0:48.0 | Obviously, the reaction changes as you talk to colleagues and you make sense of the red book, |
| 0:52.0 | which is the book that's got all the treasury costings in detail. But what was your instinctive reaction? Well, I was more struck by your reaction. And a lot of people in the office, which was a kind of, is that it? Is that it? Yeah. Is that what you thought? Well, it's an interesting thing because a lot of this, the big headline figure, the 2P cut on national insurance following a 2P cut in the autumn, |
| 1:11.3 | which we'll get into and we'll get into the history of that in a second. That was leaked in |
| 1:14.4 | advance, or rather it came out in advance and number 10 confirmed it, so we knew it was coming. |
| 1:18.5 | From April the 6th, employee national insurance will be cut by another 2P from 10% to 8%. |
| 1:27.0 | And self-employed national insurance will be cut from 8% to 6%. |
| 1:33.7 | It means an additional £450 a year for the average employee. |
| 1:39.6 | But I was led to believe that this was going to be a real pre-election budget, not necessarily |
| 1:43.4 | the last big |
| 1:44.4 | financial statement before, but I thought there'd be more potential rabbits out of hats and there'd |
... |
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