Social housing, NHS workforce and Liz Truss debt claims

More or Less: Behind the Stats

BBC

Business, Mathematics, Science, News Commentary, News

4.6 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 20 September 2023

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Long: Housing minister Rachel Maclean claimed the government has built a record number of social rent homes. Tim and the team investigate. Following Lucy Letby’s conviction, we look at how sentences for murder have changed over the past few decades. Plus after Liz Truss’s speech this week defending her short stint as Prime Minister, Tim reminds us how her mini-budget raised borrowing costs and might have pushed up the national debt even more. And will 1 in 11 workers in England really work for the NHS by the middle of the next decade? Presenter: Tim Harford Series producer: Jon Bithrey Producers: Daniel Gordon, Natasha Fernandes, Nathan Gower, Charlotte McDonald, Editor: Richard Vadon Production Co-ordinator: Maria Ogundele Sound Engineer: Rod Farquhar

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to more or less, the program that brings a dose of statistical
0:04.2	rigor to the news and a dose of common sense to statistical rigor. This week, our murderers
0:10.1	getting away with murder, or are they being locked up for longer than ever? Liz Truss is worried
0:16.8	about the cost of government debt, but it's the call coming from inside the house. A housing
0:22.5	minister says the government has built record numbers of social rent homes, but we don't think
0:28.0	those words mean what she thinks they mean. And on current trends by the year 2100,
0:33.4	everyone in the UK will be employed by the NHS, probably. We'll find some actual numbers, I promise.
0:38.8	Anything can happen in the next half hour. So, let's start with what happened in June.
0:44.5	Rachel McLean, a minister at the department for levelling up, housing and communities,
0:49.2	was giving an interview to the magazine Inside Housing when she was asked about the government's
0:54.1	record on social housing. Can you talk about social rent homes,
0:57.9	the number of social rent homes that were built? I can talk about number of social rent homes
1:01.8	that were built. Okay, so last. We've got record numbers of social rent homes that have been held.
1:07.3	Record numbers of social rent homes. Well, keep hearing about spiraling rents and housing crises.
1:13.8	That sounds like good news to me. And then I see that our reporter, Charlotte McDonald,
1:18.9	has joined me in the studio, which is the kiss of death for apparently optimistic statistics.
1:23.6	However, it is always good to see you, Charlotte. Hello. Good to see you, Tim. We must not
1:28.0	meeting like this. I'd love to keep meeting like this. But while I have you this time,
1:32.4	could you explain what on earth is going on? What is social rent housing?
1:36.9	It's a form of housing provided by a council or housing association, which is meant to be relatively
1:42.0	lower cost. Now, the minister Rachel McLean was referring to England. And as we heard,
1:47.3	she said the government had built record numbers of these homes. But that's just not true.
	...

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