Hello, this is the Webbox Podcast. I'm Matt Shirley. Many thanks to Patrick McGraw and

Carol Walker for looking after you over the Easter break, but I'm back and asking a big

question. Do you feel better off than you did four years ago? That was the Reagan question.

Do you feel better off than you did 13 years ago? It's the question that Labour are trying

to pose ahead of the next election. So, why are Labour doing so badly on the economy compared

to other policy areas? That's the thing we're going to take a look at. In our big thing coming up,

we've got Paul Johnson and Peter Manson and Poppy Trovich and some Polling as well. So, we're

going to do that in just a moment. But first, as ever, we kick off for the comments.

The columnists with Libby Raichy, Libby Purvis and Rachel Sylvester on Times Radio.

At Rachel, let's start talking about the Times Health Commissioner, which of course you're

sharing, and an extraordinary story over the weekend talking about compensation. The cost of

compensating mothers and their families for harm caused by NHS maternity services is now so

much money. It's more than we spend on the maternity services themselves. Yeah, it's incredible,

isn't it? In fact, it's more than double. It's almost crippled the amount. So, the amount on

compensation and legal cases is over £8 billion a year. And the amount spent on maternity care

itself is only £3 billion. And I just found this absolutely stunning figure, really, and shocking.

We came across this because James Tickum, who is one of our commissioners, is a patient safety

campaigner who very tragically lost his own baby, Joshua, when he was very, very tiny in the

more convey scandal. And he suggested we should look into this. So, he got

Minister of the Davis on the data team to crunch the numbers. And she revealed this astonishing

mismatch. And I think I've been trying to talk to people about what the explanation is,

since we found these figures. And I think there is one factor, which is that payouts for a baby

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