Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a podcast from Politics Home with me Alan Tolhurst.

In this episode, we'll look at the fallout from this week's spring statement.

After Rachel Reeves confirmed a host of cuts to benefit payments and a squeeze on public spending

to offset a downgrade in the country's growth forecast, following a rocky

few months of the UK economy since the Chancellor's big tax racing budget last autumn. But the

question has already turned to whether further tax rises will be needed as soon as this year,

as global forces, including the threats of further tariffs from Donald Trump's White House,

will continue to choke off any recovery. But while Reeves argues, without such fiscal prudence,

Britain would have landed further in the fiscal mire, some labour-back benches fume about the optics

of a government appearing to balance the books on the backs of some of the poorest in society

due to their own self-imposed fiscal rules. To discuss all that and renewed questions over the role

of the OBR in guiding the Treasury's hand every six months, I'm delighted to be joined by today's panel. With me as John Glenn, former

Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who now sits on the Treasury Select Committee, Helen Barnard,

Director of Policy, Research and Impact at the Trussle charity, Greg Thwaites, research director

at the Resolution Foundation think tank, and Chris Curtis, Labour MP for Milton Keynes North,

and the vice chair at the Labour Growth Group of MPs.

So Greg, I'm going to start with you. Can you just explain what it was the Chancellor announced yesterday

and why we kind of had a spring statement? We had a spring statement because the government

has set themselves some fiscal rules and twice a year, the Office of Budget Responsibility, makes forecasts about whether those fiscal rules are going to be met.

The latest forecast was that the fiscal rule was going to be broken. That's mostly because interest rates have gone up and the government's interest bill has gone up.

And that blew

through all of the headroom, the space that the chancellor had set herself over and above her

...