Thank you for downloading more or less from the BBC. This is the version of the

programme first broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Here's Tim Halford.

Hello and welcome to more or less the programme which takes the numbers out of the cut and thrust

of political debate gives them a sticking plaster and kisses them better. This week is David

Cameron Wright that we're all better off. We question claims about how many sickness-benefit

applicants have been found fit to work and we tot up the cost of having children as my children

hoard their pocket money. I'm saving up. I don't know what for but I'm just saving up.

But first Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls has done some sums and come up with a plan.

The latest figures show that those earning over £150,000 paid almost £10bn more in tax

in the three years when the 50p top rate of tax was in place then when the government conducted

their assessment of that tax back in 2012. For the next parliament the next Labour government

will reverse this government's top rate tax cut so we can finish the job of getting the deficit

down fairly. Now this announcement has left a number of loyal listeners puzzled. Here's an email

from one of them Danny Banks. The government states that the decision to cut the top rate from

50p to 45p reduced treasury income by only £100bn. But Labour counter that. Almost £10bn more was

paid in tax in the three years the 50p tax rate was in use they say. I can't see why there should

be any argument. The treasury must know how much everyone earned after the tax cut because it

had to in order to take the correct amount of tax from them. Why can't the calculations be

rerun using the old tax levels against the new data to find out how much tax would have been

paid without the change? Danny if only life was so simple what you're suggesting would work

perfectly well if all the taxable income in the country was a sort of delicious gigantic cake

then all the Chancellor had to do was decide how big a slice to take but taxable income is a

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