Can the Prime Minister Change the Way the UK Works?

hello we’re going to take three big things that seem quite disconnected and explain why they are connected it is K starmer’s attempts to reform the British State and how the government works what might be happening with the benefits bill for people who are out of work and Donald Trump’s trade policy around the world we will join those three massive dots on this episode of the BBC’s Daily News podcast newscast hello it’s Adam in the newscast Studio it’s Vicky in the newscast Studio it’s
fil also in the newscast studio and it’s Nick sitting next to Adam in the newscast studio and I can’t wait to find out how you’re going to link the musical Hamilton which I imagine you will be singing again to what’s been happening in the news this week but I I look I look forward to how that Happ it’s hard it’s tenuous it won’t work but give it a go stay tuned for that anyway right um Chris Mason is not here because he’s hot footing it back from Hull where the Prime Minister did his speech today
which was Bill is kind of rewiring how government works and then listening to the speech the first 15 minutes of it did not feel like a massive rewiring of the state and then we got to the big reveal at the end where the Prime Minister said he was going to abolish the UK’s biggest quango which for those of you who don’t know what that means that’s a quasi autonomous non-governmental organization and here is Chris’s take on the quango that got AED hello newscasters from Hull we’ve just heard the prime minister make quite
a big announcement a rewiring of the NHS in England the abolition of NHS England and taking what was an arms length body into the Department of Health and it’s a a big example of the overall theme that we’ve heard from the Prime Minister today which is that sort of sense that government has sprouted tentacles in all sorts of different directions over years and years and years and it’s all a bit too complicated and it means if you’re the prime minister in Downing Street and you crank a lever of power
nothing actually happens or it doesn’t happen quickly enough and promise are quite kind of salty quite fruity in his language about all of that the sense of the state being too stodgy and a frustration from him about that why because he knows that you know we collectively as an electric can be quite unforgiving times have been tough and he needs to deliver the change that was the central word he promised back in the election campaign and he hopes that if you rewire how the state and government works that that might be possible but
that is the Big Challenge so uh plenty to discuss now Vicki when I was a baby political correspondent in 2011 I remember you and I spending a lot of time reporting on the creation of NHS England because it was Andrew lansley the then Health secretary who came up with it and it caused a massive problem for David Cameron because he then spent it cost him a lot of political Capital to go ahead with this yeah and I think what is interesting here is that it is going back on that isn’t it so the idea was that you have NHS England you
haven’t got White Hall dictating what happens in places it was taking the politics out the health yeah more autonomy they were going to be Innovative now of course you know I think Jeremy Hunt today who was you know then Health secretary for a very long time he was saying the problem is that’s fine if the NHS is working well everything’s going to plan Innovations are happening of course that isn’t what has happened since so now the idea is really to bring all back in house again effectively so you can see the upside
you know ministers have more control um they can make decisions they can dictate where that money goes and there’s an awful lot of that money of course the downside you could say is then when things go wrong there’s only one person carrying the can and that is the health secretary so a lot of people will think actually in a democracy it should be ministers who are held to account do you think we should have a a brief moment of sympathy for Andrew lansley cuz I remember talking to him in the run up to
the 2010 election about his great reform plan and I remember thinking I don’t think I really understand this and David cameon both I know and David Cameron said no no Andrew lansay is doing a marvelous job because Andrew lansay had had that job shadow Health secretary for a long time and he did a big job of taking the conservatives seriously on that issue he did his reforms and then what did David Cameron’s team say in this tone of voice we don’t understand it and they didn’t understand it and it
they tried to pull it back but it was too late and eventually it politically unraveled for thing is though FIS NHS England isn’t exactly like a household name is it well I do wonder you do get a lot of announcements like this from this government and it’s sort of like Plumbing wiring of government quangos you probably never heard of and it seems to be the reversal of a strategy that I thought that they were pursuing that they liked for example uh what the bank of England has done with its independence in setting credible
interest rate policy and that’s applied in various ways that’s what I thought I heard from them about a year ago and they set up an independent inquiry by Louis Casey into what to do about social care and all and you know you get the experts you give them a Target and they come up with a solution that you then follow there sort of it’s not just here there’s also remember it was a little bit more obscure but kind of no less relevant in terms of the economic policy was what they did with the competition
uh commissioner who they kind of said that they fired and you sort of Wonder well have they just got into government decided actually we do want all the joysticks of control and all the you know and we want to know when to take off and when to land things and micromanage things there’s a lot you know we talk about waiting lists one of the problems is the you go after one waiting list Target and you just cause a problem somewhere else like a giant wacka because people pursue that Target rather than the other one yeah so
they’ll be responsible for all of those tradeoffs at a micro level now um but also you have a couple of big challenges coming up you have the PFI projects which were a labor invent the consequences of that as those contracts run out or those hospitals fit for purpose like changes in the way the mental health you know the increasing we’ll talk about this later in terms of the benefit system you know this just massive massive challenges maybe maybe it’s right to be more accountable but I’m not sure these these these sort of
changing the way that the back back office systems work is really the sort of strong change that people tapping into a frustration I think isn’t here and you could feel it when he was saying it today and it did seemed to sound like he really meant this the frustration that you hear from people all the time nothing works nothing works properly everything’s so inefficient this country can’t build anything all of that thing which we heard when around the planning system where they’re trying to make
changes around that and it did seem like a genuine frustration from him that having got into power it was like you were saying like you think you can do something and then actually I know I’m trying to do all these things and I can’t do it and yeah I was chatting to West treating the health secretary on Thursday’s episode of news which you can listen to on BBC sounds and I said to him it’s like hang on labor is meant to be the party that represents public sector workers and you’ve just fired
thousands and thousands of them how does that make you feel that has weighed heavily on me because uh I don’t think that the criticisms I’m leveling of the setup and of the bloated bureaucracy that we see is in any way a reflection on the brilliant people who work in those organizations yeah so he’s having to sort of Contour a little bit um but but Nick back to Vicky’s point about prime ministers making this kind of speech we’ve seen Prime Ministers making this kind of speech before but normally it’s
after they’ve been in office for three years five years eight years 10 years in Tony Blair’s case but this is star we making it within year one that’s right we had to wait a little bit until Tony Blair found those scars on his back and then decided tell the world about his frustrations we waited a bit and um you know it’s happened very quickly with k d a few months ago do you remember he did the warm bath quote about civil servants uh talking about an element of complacency clearly hadn’t clocked how
badly that would be received and there was not exactly a rowing back but certainly reaching out to the civil service but some of his language was was really strong today now the danger of that is that in in the current climate this government any government will be judged at the next election on what they achieve not what they say so clearly what he did a few months ago was he said something now he’s doing something which they hope and believe will make a difference if this doesn’t make a difference and they go around blaming
the Civil Service the electorate are not interested in that and if anything you might undermine your position even more if you do that um Vicki have you managed to get to the bottom yet of what’s going to be in this uh reform of the benefits system that fisel was hinting at a second ago because there’s so much stuff floating around in the papers there’s rumors there’s MPS going into Downing Street to be briefed about what it might be and coming out and not being happy about it what do we think is going on
yeah I mean I think there’s there’s two things happening here which are related but are also causing tension so one is they came into Power labor and they had Liz Kendall put into uh the DWP department for work and pensions you know as a reformer so there was on the agenda that they were going to change the welfare system and you know their argument is that the current system is morally indefensible there are too many people effectively being written off as not ever being able to work and they’re
on benefits and they’re not g being given the help to get back to work so that was obviously on the agenda already then you have now um a little problem with the amount of money that the treasury is getting in and they need to find some more so I think what’s happened here is that you’ve got yes a a Secretary of State who wants to make changes but then you’ve got a treasury saying you need to make them a bit quicker because we need the money a bit quick a bit bigger uh and more than you may be expected to so I think this is
causing tension and there’s briefings coming from all different places about what exactly is going to happen there there were suggestions that the savings will be between five and six billion important to think about how much Liz Kendall might be able to keep back in order to make the changes that are needed and how much will be taken off uh to Rachel Reeves’s Co coffers um so we’re not quite sure the numbers there but you know they’re going to be looking at various things they’re going to be looking at Universal Credit and
they’re going to be looking at potentially uh pip which is personal Independence payments where that falls I don’t think we know yet and labor MPS haven’t been given details about that yet I was told recently that there’s not going to be a freeze on pit benefits but of course it could be they don’t go up as much as people might have expected there’s there’s wriggle room there and you can see the the labor Rebellion Brewing of course it’s in a context of where for the government to lose
something the Rebellion would have to be enormous oh you can see it brewing and you can really sort of I could detect a real change in the atmosphere this week so you know my thing is I hang around the House of Commons I’m there at 10:00 when the votes often I’m the only one there cuz it’s late at night the only journalist there and I the bars are shut now and the bars are shut and normally what happens is you sort of go up to MPS and say what do you think about this what do you think about that this week I
had lots of MPS coming up to me bending my ear and wanting to tell me how unhappy they are and the thing that will be alarming the government which is why you’re getting these Round Table briefings in Downing Street is this is not the campaign group on the left these are loyalists these are people who are really loyal to K stama and one newly elected labor MP who said isn’t K starm doing absolutely brilliant on Ukraine he’s seizing the moment but we need a reset not happy about these welfare cuts
and then this MP said we’ve got to come up with a system which allows labor MPS to sleep at night but the complication for them is that this is a green paper on health and disability benefits next week green paper being like sort of the very first stage of a reform which has been in the pipeline for months and the reason why it’s been in the pipelin for months I’m now going to say something and we have Professor fisel here so he can correct me if I’ve got this wrong but as I understand it these cuts the
amount of money that has to be cut was scored in the red book by the last government what Liz Kendall is doing is doing her way of doing it not the conservatives way and absolutely as Vicki says so the the the Liz Kendall view is that the system was broken under the last government because it basically put you into a category of you can work or you can’t work and that’s it and she wants a much more flexible system so it’s her system but the sums of money have already been scored as I understand it Professor fisel is over there I’ve
mentioned the red book in his presence and is it right well that is part of the story some of these reforms were announced by the previous government and they’re going to do a version of it and probably change the name of it um and continue with that and they sort of have to but they’re going to have to make more savings than that so we’re going to get on top of that and we’re talking fairly substantial sums as well as Vicki mentioned 5 six billion pounds and that’s not even all of the space that
they have to make up from their self-imposed debt targets I say have to this is quite an interesting question now because there is a a sort of long-term reform plan that emerges from the fact that something very fundamental has changed in the British economy which has been an increase in the prevalence of mental ill health especially with young people some young people not even going into the workforce and then leaving it but just going straight from education into uh you know some sort of incapacity or disability disability
benefit so some would argue from the right they would argue well hang on we never used to pay out benefits for these sorts of illnesses this is a new thing and you get that sort of familiar argument about you know you know just pull your pull your socks up is what is that we hear in the papers quite a lot you they obvious trying to be a lot more sensitive uh around these issues but clearly that bill has gone up something like think 28 billion was the bill in 201920 it’s heading according to the obr to 70 billion for disability incapacity
and related work related benefits what they’re trying to do as I understand it is they call it bend that curve if Trends continue as they are it’ll be 70 billion and they’re going to try and make that 70 billion number probably about 65 billion how you get there is complicated and difficult but is it necessarily the same thing you would do if you were so you’re trying to save the money upfront in a way that scores on the forecast in two weeks time that’s one thing but if you were in fact trying
to do a reform that paid for itself by getting people back into work would you have done it the same way these are two different things they’re trying to sort of merge them together and this is why the detail will matter yeah I and it’s actually the same reason why we were talking about the you know the reason why one of the reasons why this merge is happening on the NHS is that they save several thousand headcount jobs that’s hundreds of millions of pounds that is scored and so there is a big question
here which I think will be increasingly asked by labor MPS is is the tail wagging the dog here are we in fact yes we need yes ideally we’d be paying a lot less money out in disability related benefits because everyone would be working we’d find appropriate jobs for people they wouldn’t feel the need to claim in the first place but is that the driver here is it top down or bottom up the driver here this is making me think three things and Vicki you can pick which one you want to think about one we’re now into a conversation about
these fiscal rules that Rachel Reeves has are supposed to help her because they’re meant to give her credibility and a guide to how to manage the public finances that she thinks is is electri beneficial because it makes her look responsible are we now in a world where actually they’re a problem rather than rather than a help then the second thing is historically saving money on benefits has been really hard because actually the world keeps keeps turning and actually reform is expensive and actually George Osborne tried to save
loads of money on benefits didn’t didn’t hit the targets at all and then the third thing is which I can hopefully remember it’s like this is even before we’re spending extra new money on defense because the extra money that’s been on defense thus far has been taken from the foreign aid budget this isn’t like actually where do we save money to give more to defense yeah you can pick one of the three well no I’m going to merge a few of them okay multiple choice but interesting George Osborne actually
has been talking about how he tried to reform pip and it just couldn’t do it it was just too controversial so it’ be interesting if the yeah because the IND dunan Smith resigned yeah yeah so if the labor government goes down that route um you talk about the defense spending the other I think the interesting thing here is about the debate in the labor party now there’s a difference between MPS being really quite irritated and coming up and telling us they’re very annoyed and a mass full-on Rebellion where they
you know said they’re not going to vote for it but if you look at a few of the people say Analisa dods so she had obviously her Oda but you know over overseas aid budget taken away from her she resigns and then in her letter talks about how with the party has got to think much more broadly about how you do this because you can’t just keep taking bits from here and there slashing budgets you’ve got to think about something else she talks about a wealth tax that was raised by Richard Bergen who is of the left of the party that was
raised in prime minister’s questions this week so I wonder whether that’s where what’s going to happen if you’re having to then find loads of money for defense as well is it it’s not going to be enough just to try and raid all these other budgets potentially Adam you’re very sharp this evening just saying oh I thinking three thoughts and I can exclusively reveal because I’m sitting next to Adam he didn’t write that down that was all off the top of his head that’s why though when I got to the
third point I like never say how many points you’re going to make it was very impressive what I was going to say one interesting thing that we sort of haven’t mentioned it that is at the heart of all this is covid so in the letter that was written by 36 labor MPS supporting Liz Kendall now 35 cuz one MP took her signature off it they talked about if I’ve remembered this correctly that we are the only the only G7 country that has not got back to preco levels of out of work and um that that essentially
there is a huge Legacy of what has happened as a result of covid and the big idea that Jeremy Hunt the former Chancellor conservative former Chancellor is talking about is he’s saying if you could get the benefits Bill back to where it was preco he estimates that eventually that would save you40 billion pound a year and he’s talking about that that is big bucks big bucks but what are the big social consequences of doing that well basically a social decision as to whether the areas of growth he’s basically saying that’s the difference
between the 30 billion I talked to in 2019 and the 70 billion where it’s heading to so you basically assume all of those new entrance uh onto the incapacity benefit system that are you take it do you take it away from them uh do you all the future uh claims as well you know that that is quite tricky but I think the decisions need to be made does the state pay for this is in is you know when the incapacity benefit system was created it was for physical disabilities what I was going to say in my very magisterial
summing up of this section of newscast because we have to move on to something else is that it’s just a reminder that we’re living with a benefit system that we’ve kind of inherited from the 1980s and then a planning system which is something else the Government tried to reform this week that we inherited from the 1940s and it just feels quite weird to me that here we are in 2025 talking about all these issues and the tools we’ve got to address them are from the 1980s and the 1940s no disrespect to
anyone born in those eras or producing music in those eras but it just feels quite weird to me that that that that’s where we’re at right last thing we’re going to talk about Trump’s tariffs and actually finally they came home to roost in the UK this week because it’s always been aort like oh an exotic thing that affects Europe or Canada but now it affects Britain because of the the global tariff on everyone that produces steel and sends it to America it it affects us but then also they’ve had to
make a decision and they try to get an exemption the government has had the UK government had to make a decision they tried to get an exemption they didn’t get an exemption but they didn’t retaliate they didn’t retaliate because the bigger game here it’s still relatively it’s important for the seel industry but it’s still a relatively modest amount we’re talking hundreds of millions of pounds not billions or tens of billions the bigger game is what’s happening right now which is the process where the
us is going to assess how much they want to reciprocate against various crimes against trade that they perceive so that could be a big tariff that you already levy on American Goods but it could also be some other type of barrier or it could be the Digital Services tax or it could be vat itself and so in trying to stop that process for the UK they’ve decided to just leave the steel and aluminium on the side now now the other thing that’s happening is as the trade War sort of grows bigger um I think you’re going to
you’re going to get uh other countries trying to look for international buddies to just try and focus the mind of the Americans so I don’t think this sort of sort of you know quietly sipping your pip whilst everyone else has a massive fight strategy is going to work well to point of phrase will kir starma come under pressure to join a coalition of the Willing against Trump’s trade policy well um so our Instinct will be to say no and not well well we’ll discuss I mean it’s all it’s all going off now I
mean just you’ve got you know you’ve got the you’ve got Walmart now being hauled up before the Chinese because they’re trying to avoid basically it’s going to cost American consumers but the president believes it won’t and so he has to make that reality come through and Nick I’m going to come to you in a minute for the musical finale because I want to see how you’re going to get from Hamilton to this but Vicki how is starmer’s Mission as the bridge between Europe and America
and kind of getting the benefits of both actually working out because okay he probably had a bit of a win when it came to Ukraine because now the US and Ukraine are kind of more aligned than they were two weeks ago when they were falling out in the Oval Office but equally as fisa was saying he didn’t manage to get a carve out for Britain from stealing aluminium tariffs so actually the bridge has gone that this this yeah this metaphor is not working I was thought it through but anyway take yeah give me your take yeah the wobbly
Bridge how wobbly is the bridge and I and I think partly they’ they’re also assessing the fact that it’s changing all the time as well so partly the retaliation may be not happening yet because might be hoping hoping that it that it changes you know tomorrow who knows so I think they’re biing their time and as you say on Ukraine there was a you know on on the peace talks as it were there was a a lot of briefing going on about how instrumental the UK was behind the scenes you know the role of
of some of the diplomats and some of the people in number 10 about all of that so they’re still trying to you know make sure that they’ve got a a position when it comes to that but you know it can be thrown back in in his face and that is always the problem isn’t it with Donald Trump he’ll say one thing one day and it could be completely different the next right Lyn Manuel what because that’s lynwell man Linn Manuel Miranda author of Hamilton yeah well the room where it happened saying the words of it so look
I always never go anywhere without this it’s an article uh on Fox news by Scott bessent who is the new treas of course because never leave home without it and he points out that Alexander Hamilton the first treasury Secretary of the United States who was one of fil’s early contacts in his early in of the dollar there we are he was a proponent of tariffs Alexander Hamilton believed in tariffs and in those days that was a very very and almost the only way of raising uh taxes but anyway Scott Besson then explains why today tariffs can be a
really good idea and they’re basically he says a weapon to deliver the political and economic goals that Donald Trump wants and essentially he’s saying that globalization was meant to do two big things bring China into the open liberal free trading world and ensure that you have lots of wonderful jobs in the United States and he said globalization has failed to do that with China and what you’ve happened with the United States his jobs being outsourced to China and Mexico so one of the ways you Reser reverse that is you deploy
Donald Trump’s favorite word in the English language tariffs so there we are that’s how we get from tariff this argument so many other jobs have been outsourced to America all the Coca-Cola we buy right people used to buy their own soft drink or recreational drink you know you know America has benefited hugely from globalization and and for some reason they’ve just decided to forget all of that you know it’s been the number one beneficiary of globalization now China did benefit like as you say but the Hamilton argument too
I mean this there was no federal income tax at that point so I mean is is that the world we’re going back to you didn’t sing you didn’t sing it you your task now is to make a Phantom of the Opera reference or Wicked or wicked wicked and my job is to say that’s it for this episode of newscast I’m off to go and listen to some music saying is Sit Down You’re Rocking The Boat oh Guys and Dolls Guys and Dolls right okay I would love to make a musical theater podcast but I’m paid to make a news
podcast and we’ve done that very well this evening so thank you very much everyone thank you cheers and that’s all for this episode of newscast we’ll be back with another one very soon bye-bye