The Cost of Abandoning Austerity
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 6 July 2017
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The chancellor is facing widespread calls for more spending. Should he listen, or stick to his deficit reduction plan?
Senior Conservatives are calling for more public spending on things like public sector pay - but Philip Hammond is committed to what he himself calls 'the long slog of austerity'.
David Aaronovitch invites a range of experts into The Briefing Room to help him understand the arguments around public spending, and asks if the UK should ditch austerity?
Guests include Paul Johnson from the IFS and economists Ann Pettifor and Tim Besley.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the briefing room with me, David Oronovich. |
| 0:03.3 | This week, in the face of calls for more spending and a relaxation of public pay caps, |
| 0:08.9 | we're asking whether the UK should now end austerity. |
| 0:25.8 | The Chancellor is not lacking in advice. |
| 0:27.8 | The headlines this morning, Boris Johnson, has become the latest senior cabinet minister |
| 0:29.7 | to urge the Chancellor and Theresa May |
| 0:31.5 | to end the public sector pay cap. |
| 0:34.4 | The Conservative mood music has changed. |
| 0:40.0 | A few of his senior colleagues, some openly, |
| 0:46.0 | some more circumspectly, are in effect asking the Chancellor for respite from what he himself describes as the hard slog of austerity. Should he heed their advice and take actions such as |
| 0:53.1 | lifting the 1% cap on public sector pay, |
| 0:56.0 | or should he stick to his deficit reduction plan? |
| 1:00.0 | The PM seems to think it should be the latter. |
| 1:03.0 | It isn't fair to go out and tell people that they can have all the public spending they want without paying for it. |
| 1:11.8 | For now, Philip Hammond says he's holding his nerve |
| 1:15.2 | and sticking to his plan to eliminate the deficit by 2025. |
| 1:20.7 | Should he? Or should he give it up? |
| 1:23.5 | Step inside the briefing room and hear what the expert advice might be. |
| 1:32.3 | Later on, Paul Johnson from the Institute for Fiscal Studies |
| 1:35.3 | will brief me on the pressures Philip Hammond is under |
| 1:38.3 | and I'll hear the case for and against ditching austerity from two leading economists. But first, I want to know |
| 1:47.0 | how we came to embrace austerity in the first place. So the BBC's economics correspondent, Andy Verity, |
... |
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