Coming up on the Peston podcast, when the economic recovery comes, how fast will it be?

Has peace broken out in the vaccine war between the UK and the European Union?

And the Home Secretary's asylum reforms, humane or

heartless. All this and more with the Trade Secretary Liz Truss, the Bank of England Chief

Economist, Andy Haldane, the former Home Secretary Amber Rudd, Labour MP, Chair of the Home Affairs

Select Committee, Yvette Cooper, and the distinguished actor, Jason Isaacs,

who's representing the Red Cross. First up, I talked through some of the headlines with Amber

and Yvette. I'm going to go to Yvette first. I was very struck Yvette by your exchange

with the Prime Minister this afternoon on the Liaison Committee. You, I think, were saying

that you thought it was time for France, where, as you pointed out, in some parts of France,

we've got 30% of all COVID-19 infections with this worrying South African variant. You think

that France should be put on the red list, making it, you know, putting

restrictions on people coming from France. Two things. It seemed to me as though the Prime Minister

was basically telling you we probably are heading in that direction. But aren't you worried that at a time

when trade flows with the EU, frankly, under serious pressures and difficulties because of Brexit,

that actually there's going to be quite a

big economic cost. Well, we need to keep trade flows moving. We also need to make sure that we

don't have to go into another lockdown. And what scientists have said, and we heard it from

government chief advisors yesterday, talking to MPs, is that the biggest threat at the moment to the vaccine

programme and also to the lifting of lockdown, which we're all desperate for, is the risk of new

variants spreading that could undermine the vaccine program, particularly the South Africa and

Brazil variant. We all hope it won't.

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