The Impossible Choice

Inside Briefing with the Institute for Government

Institute for Government

News, Politics, Government

4.6 • 252 Ratings

🗓️ 17 April 2020

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

To unlock or not to unlock? The government faces a momentous choice of easing the lockdown to resurrect the economy, or keeping it in place to preserve human lives. How can they find the right balance? Are today’s politicians able to cope with a return of mass unemployment after almost 40 years? The Guardian’s health editor Sarah Boseley joins us to explore the background to one of the gravest decisions in modern British history. “This might well mean austerity for certain high-rate taxpayers who perhaps got off more easily last time.” – Giles Wilkes Presented by Bronwen Maddox with Alex Thomas and Giles Wilkes. Audio production by Alex Rees. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, welcome to Inside Briefing, the podcast from the Institute for Government.
0:14.0	I'm Bronwyn Maddox.
0:16.0	First, the good news, Boris Johnson is out of hospital and convalescing at Chequers, the Prime Minister's country residents. Now the bad news. The Office for Budget Responsibility has warned that the UK
0:25.6	could now be facing its worst recession in 300 years if the lockdown continues until the summer.
0:31.6	The government is under pressure to start talking about how it would go about easing the lockdown,
0:35.6	what's been called its exit strategy. How could it work?
0:39.5	What are the risks? What are the trade-offs
0:41.5	that the government will have to make on
0:43.5	all our behalf? We'll take
0:45.4	a look at the tough choices that the government is
0:47.3	facing. And by the way, if you're
0:49.3	interested in more on the big issues
0:51.2	facing government, you'll enjoy our new
0:53.2	sister podcast, IFG, Live.
0:55.7	Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get this inside briefing, or at
1:00.9	institutefor government.org.com. Back to today's podcast, Giles Wilkes, IFG Senior Fellow and
1:07.6	former advisor to Theresa May is with us. Giles, you were number 10 as an economics
1:11.9	advisor. Did scientists get much of a look in back in those days? Oh, we tried to meet scientists as
1:17.1	often as we could. We have this excellent think tank, if you like, attached to the government
1:21.5	called the Government Office for Sciences. And we'd call them in and try to look through their
1:25.6	thousands of pages of reports all the time
1:28.0	about the future of mobility or how the energy system was changing. But never anything like this.
	...

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