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Hello and welcome to the programme.

There's a budget on March the 3rd, unlike any other.

We know chancellors make calculations that are not very precise,

plus or minus 10 billion,

but this time, everything's been off the scale in economic terms.

Never before has the arithmetic been shrouded in so much uncertainty,

but that needn't stop us thinking broadly about the next decade and what we'd used to if we were

Chancellor, having borrowed more this year than ever before in peacetime. Do we need to worry about

the government's debt rising higher and higher as a percentage of our national income.

If we do worry, when should we start trying to bring it down and how?

And this means today's program is less of the usual business chat and is a little bit more

economics than usual. This may be very consequential for those in business.

The central question is an economy challenged by Brexit, probably scarred by COVID,

are we going to be feeling some fiscal pain in the years ahead?

And I'm joined by two eminence economists, John Kay, author of too many books to mention,

but including one called The British Tax system, which is going to be

relevant to our discussion today. John was also one of the early founders of the Institute for Fiscal

Studies. And Baroness Schaffique, Minous Schafeeke, Director of the London School of Economics,

former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, and someone with a background at the World Bank

and the IMF.

Welcome to the program, both of you. Before we get stuck in, I'm interested in whether there are

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