BBC sounds, music, radio, podcasts. There's no Henry today, so we've been joined the studio by Nick Watt. Lovely Nick Watt. Lovely Nick Watt in the Sunday. Hello. Yes, and much politics to get to. Also, there's been a classic last-minute cliffhanger deal at an international conference. There has, imagine it's a summit, it might be all on and then all off and then all on and then all off and then miraculously at the last minute all on again.
and then a row about it. So we're being joined in a moment by Grea Jackson, who's been Adam's guide in the week, and she'll be our guide on this edition of the Sunday Newscast.
Newscast. Newscast from the BBC. I like landscape. I don't think I'm being rude. Japping. Unemployed people who are overweight. That is not the agenda. It's the fun police working overtime. The star is born, Elon. So hurt that America let us have. Actually, I think we need a British Trump. Take me down to Downing Street. Let's go have a tour. Blimey. Hello, it's Laura in the studio. It's Patty in the studio. And it's Nick sitting next to Patty.
Excellent. So it's always interesting, isn't it, to wonder why particular cabinet ministers are put forward to do what's known as the Sunday round, the round of interviews that they have to endure with people like me. And today it was this Kendall, the welfare secretary, who is
I would say it all feels very familiar to me. She's the work and pension secretary and she's going to stand up and say we have to crack down on the benefits budget. The Prime Minister today, even though they've apparently retired some of the rhetoric around this, has promised to blitz Britain's bulging benefits bill that blights the country. So the government is about to hit us with its new plans to try to crack down on welfare because of the huge amount of money that's being spent. What are the main bits of it, do you think?
Yes, the government down the street has a grid and there are the things they want to talk about, so what they want to talk about are these welfare reforms, but then there's what's happening in the world and we'll get to this in a bit, but obviously the big thing coming up in Parliament is the assisted dying bill, so obviously naturally you wanted to talk to Liz Kendall about that.
So what did Liz Kendall have to do this morning? Well, what she had to do was yes talk about how they want to make these savings on these welfare payments, but she wants and politically needs to make clear that this is not continuing some sort of Tory agenda. The figures may not look a million miles away from the ideas that they were inheriting from the Conservatives.
But Liz Kendall, who has been around the houses in this area for a long time. I mean, she was a special advisor to Harriet Harmon nearly 30 years ago. And Harriet Harmon famously had to do those cuts to benefits for single parents, which was a blown parent, which was like a terrible moment for Harriet Harmon, a really difficult moment for her. So Liz Kendall has been around the houses on this. And what she's essentially saying is, yes, as she said to you, we do have an issue. These numbers have gone off, gone up and off the back of the pandemic.
But she's essentially saying there are very good reasons why some people can't work. There are very good reasons why there can be mental health issues about why you're unable to work. So it's sort of politically trying to give it a much softer landing in some labor-friendly language that we take it seriously why some people can't work. But we're still going to make the cuts.
It's interesting, isn't it? Because the increases have been so astonishing and I just wanted to ask her, you know, why does she think that there are a million more people, a million more people since 2019 who are now unable to work and on the list and receiving taxpayer's cash? I think there are a combination of factors here. I do think we are seeing an increase in the number of people with mental health problems.
Both self-diagnosed, I think it's good that stigma has been reduced, but also diagnosed by doctors. We're also seeing more people in their fifties and above, often women with bad knees, hips, joints. We've got a real problem with our health service with people waiting a long time for treatment.
Yeah, and of course the bit you were hinting at is that there's been a commentary that a lot of people went on the sick and never came off the sick. That's been in the papers for a long time and the conservatives were picking that up. And we know there's an awful pain to mental health and she's getting to that there. So let's not target people, but let's talk about the number of one million. There are some older people who left the workforce in the pandemic and never went back.
And there are benefits for people who are too poor. That's how our system works. But there does seem to be, like we always talk about the financial crisis in 2008 and the shockwaves that we're still feeling, does seem to be a big cultural question for our country, which is linked
we can measure it in welfare payments. But as Laura's reminding us, we have to answer a cultural question and the Prime Minister's come out in the mainland Sunday. And coming out in the mainland Sunday, we're in quite sort of what might sound to some people's ears, quite Tory-ish language, even though in the same article that he wrote for the mainland Sunday, he said, ah, we mustn't do this with the sort of language of division and accused people of being
shirkers. But it's a very, very delicate balance for the Labour Party here because they need to save lots of money. I think they also believe it's not right. It's not good for that many people to be at home not taking part in the workforce, not taking part in society, particularly young people.
They are going to go ahead with sanctions on benefits for young people who don't take up offers of education or training or employment. They are going to try to save lots and lots of money from disability benefits, even though maybe not in exactly the same way as the conservatives had planned.
But they are going to take steps that to some people on the traditional left might feel quite punitive. Disability groups, poverty groups are really worried by this. So it's a very, very tricky balance. But I was interested that Liz Kendall did say she believed there were people in this country who should be at work, who can work, who don't. And she was quite happy to say that.
She was happy to say that, but what was also interesting in that clip and then she went on to say in the few seconds after that about that this isn't just the fallout from the pandemic. It's also she was basically saying our society is changing and
As a result of those changes, there are good reasons why people are not able to work. She talked about mental health being a much bigger issue. She went on to talk about the pressures of social media is making a big thing. Talked about people in their fifties who have issues with knees and things like that, and they're only able to work. That is, you don't hear ministers saying that, it's quite interesting. There are good reasons as a result of this changing society, why this is happening.
But it's interesting what you're saying, Laura, that there is obviously fiscal pressure on the government. They have got to bring down this spending. But there's also a political pressure. So in Danny Street, Morgan McSweeney, who was the brains behind the election campaign, is now the chief of staff, is still completely fixated on the electoral coalition that won them this election.
And what was the key element of that? It was the Red Wall, what Deborah Matinson, their pollster, described as the hero voters. The hero voters, these were people who used to vote Labour and then voted Conservative as a result of Brexit, but also as a result of feeling that Labour sort of wasn't in touch with them. And I think you can assume the thinking would be that those voters are probably not wildly keen on big benefits being paid out. And they will never forget that element of their electoral coalition.
that's right and they would absolutely hate this comparison but there's a real similarity there to what George Osborne did in the austerity years. I remember distinctly a speech where he made and he talked about how people felt when they got up early and went to work and their next door neighbours had the curtains shut. Now it was absolutely slammed by a lot of people on the left saying it was an appalling, it was divisive, it was being terribly judgmental about
many people on benefits who simply can't work, remember also that 60% of people who claim benefits are in jobs, but they get benefits because they're paid so badly. But in terms of the politics of this, where is the sort of middle of the road voter
who used to vote Labour, who then voted Tory, who voted Labour again, instinctively as you say, if you look at the polling and you look at the sort of political wisdom in the Labour Party and in the Tory Party, it's that those sort of the ordinary voter to use a terrible, terrible label is not who someone who thinks that too many people get benefits.
And you can read a lot into how the Prime Minister began his article in The Mail on Sunday, because here we are with Sunday's newscast. We try and bring together all the journalism on a Sunday. But one of the big things is when the Prime Minister writes in The Mail on Sunday, they're doing so knowingly with every single word. It's a word count and every word. So his article begins, I remember the first job I had, a farmer employed me age 14 to clear rocks from his field.
And he goes on to say that that was good for his character, his formation. So there's the sort of left landing ground that actually mental health is a dreadful curse when it goes wrong. And actually say the Labour government works good for you. And that could be a way from the left to address this issue if you believe the single cent by the Prime Minister's office. And I think that's what this Kendall's trying to do as well. She kept in our interview saying, well, when I was in Tesco in my constituency, I met some young people who were doing their first jobs and their
desperate to work desperate to get on and we have to give people education and all the opportunities they need and we must give people support but what they are also clear about is they need to take money out of this budget and they will increase sanctions for people who don't take offers up so they're really really walking a tightrope here. But it's massive and the numbers are so
enormous. This bill, the benefits bill is projected to go up to 100 billion, which is not far off the same budget that the NHS gets. I mean, it's such a huge amount of taxpayers' money. Far dwarfing what goes on things like education and defense and all of those pressures. So whatever you think of this debate and newscasters as ever, let us know what your own experiences are and what you think.
this government is determined to try to bring the bill down. And also because they think it's the right thing to get more people into him. Bring the bill down, but use very different language as sort of language you heard from George Osborne here. I mean, it's interesting. You mentioned what George Osborne said. I remember being on the campaign trail with David Cameron in the 2015 election when let us not forget he won a majority. And I come out. We've got a Labour lost a gazillion seats. So, you know, depending how you, depending how you look at it off the back of the referendum. You two need your own podcast. I've now just
And I remember going through a market, I can't remember which market was, marketplace with David Cameron. And those remarks by George Osborne had completely struck a chord. It's absolutely totally struck a chord in it. Totally. Those sorts of voters completely identify with that. But what Liz Kendall's showing and the Prime Minister's language is that they are
just not going to use that sort of language. They just, I think they regarded that as as provocative, but you will hear the sort of language of the importance of work. And who also made that point very strongly on your program was Kevin Hollerake on for the conservative shadow housing, but obviously you talked to him about this. And he did talk about the crucial importance to your well being of work. And the person who would always make that argument very, very strongly on the importance of work.
It was Rishi Sunak. Gordon Brown. Oh, and Gordon Brown, right. Gordon Brown. Well, there we go. I also feel we, on Saturday, touched Laura raised this, that did the government really expect, with all the programs about the budget, which we have to wait for, and now the welfare bill and the health service, do we really expect to be spending so much time discussing assisted dying? So early in the first labor government since 2010, do we really expect to be here?
And what's your answer to that, Nick, because you were just telling me before we came into recording. It's sort of out of their hands because this was top of the MP's balance. Yeah, so it's a private member's bill put forward by Kim Ledbetter. The way that private members bill work is you literally name out of a hat. And it turns out that Kim Ledbetter, who is a campaign for some time on this, comes top of the bubble.
And if your private members bill is top of the ballot, you have a really good chance. Obviously, you have a very good chance of it being debated in a very prominent way. But you have a really good chance of it becoming law. So this is not a government matter. The government is neutral on it. They haven't pushed it. It's almost like a lottery that it's come out top. But we do know that Kia Starmer voted in favor of this, not this exact bill, but this issue when it came before MPs.
I think it was in 2015. And when he was director of public prosecutions, he did an incredibly important review of the implementation of the law to give an element of flexibility. And I think I'm right in saying, since that was carried out, there have been, I believe, tiny number
tiny if indeed no prosecutions. So it is a matter that is really important to him. But what is interesting about the Prime Minister, important to say it's a free vote. There's no government position. Ministers can vote as they want. But Keir Starmer has not been out of the bloc saying, I voted for this in 2015. I'm going to vote for it now. He's taking it very seriously. He says he's going to read the legislation seriously, but he will be voting on Friday.
And I'm not sure how much we're going to hear from him in advance. And I was talking to one of his colleagues about this yesterday. He was comparing him with Harold Wilson around the abortion vote back in 1968, 1978. And Harold Wilson was studiously neutral on this issue. Never said how he voted. Now, the home secretary at the time is Roy Jenkins, who spoke for the proposal at the government dispatch box. That won't happen this week. But it was known that the home secretary was incredibly supportive of changing the law.
But the Prime Minister stayed studiously neutral. So I'm not sure how and when we'll actually hear from Kirstalne before the vote itself. And one of his colleagues said actually, you know, they were slightly joking, but they said, well, maybe he won't even vote. But what's happened in the last 24 hours since we talked about it yesterday, Patti, which I think is really significant, is the justice secretary who'd be in charge of developing the legal framework around this, Shabbat Amamud,
has come out and not just said she won't vote for it, we know as a matter of conscience she doesn't approve anyway, but she's said that the safeguards are particularly weak. Now I think that's a really influential intervention in this debate for MPs who might be wobbling on it.
If the person in charge of the legal system is looked at the safeguards and said, they don't stand up to me, I think that may well sway some MPs here. And I think, yeah, go on. The two cabinet ministers who would be in charge of the delivery of this policy, if it becomes law are, as you say, Shabana McMood, the Justice Secretary, because you have to have approval from a high court judge,
and West Street in the Health and Social Care Secretary, you need the approval of two medical professionals, both of them have said no. And the agreed position set out by the Cabinet Secretary was that free vote, Cabinet ministers can vote and say what they think. But what they have to do it said, Cabinet ministers taking view just have to state previously held views and not campaign. And there is a very strong...
a very strong view on the Kim Leadbeat aside. They're too muscular, too emotional. And let's... Kendall, this morning, was also very trenchant in her views, and she's backing the bill. I think it is really important, as a society, we talk about what makes for a good death. Because, thank goodness, with medical advances, the sudden deaths from heart attacks and stroke are much less common than they were in the past, and many of us, our own families, see people who...
Take more time to die and we really need to wake up to that question and face it about what makes a good death. So just to summarise the front pages, so the justice actually for England and Wales is the lead in the observer with a very strong, certainly very strong words, but Sunday Times has got another poll that says that's its front page saying two-thirds of the public
are backing a change to the law. And so I've tried not to use the word want when I discussed this because every family has a story. And I know there'll be someone listening right now who's in tears at the end of life questions that their family are facing. So I'm not using the word want. But here we are with this massive cultural change. What we can do to instruct ourselves in the news is follow what other countries have done.
Now, you've been in the center of this. Did you have the Belgian Health Minister? We did. We had the Belgian Health Minister who's also the Deputy Prime Minister in Belgium, who's called Frank van de Brucker. And in Belgium, they changed the law to allow euthanasia, so where a doctor brings somebody's life to an end, rather than what we were talking about, which is assisted dying, where you would be helped to do it yourself.
But they changed the law back in 2002, and it has expanded to include children in some cases, people with mental illness in some cases, and they're considering now expanding patients with dementia and giving them more rights to be able to bring their lives to an end. But it was really interesting to hear what their experience has been in Belgium, and he really made it sound as if it has become a completely acceptable part of their culture.
Well, there was a lot of debate about the law when it was introduced in 2002, but I think by now it's been very well accepted that euthanasia is something that is not an unconditional right, but there is a right to request euthanasia.
Let's say 25 years ago, there was also a real divide maybe in along lines of religious belief versus people who do not call their religious belief on dying and the right to die. But I think that's kind of changed very much. Well, it seems to me this bill is in the balance in the UK, whatever's happened in Belgium. You two are not going to call it on this podcast. I'm betting the Friday outcome.
Well, I've spent a lot of time talking to MPs about this in recent weeks. And I have to say, it is a lot easier to find people who have deep doubts about this bill than it is to find people who are saying they're jumping up to do this. I mean, obviously, there are the known supporters of Kim Leadbeater, Kit Mort House, former Education Secretary under Boris Johnson, Christine Jardine, the Liberal Democrats.
But there are a lot of MPs. I would say we don't know how the vote is going to go, who are not happy about it. And what is interesting is a lot of the newly elected Labour MPs. A lot of them are saying, this is too big.
And too soon, we've just arrived here and we're facing up to this so quickly. So I think it would be wrong to make any assumptions about which way it's going to go. Yeah, I think anything could happen. I think absolutely anything could happen. And I just don't have a handle on the way it's going to go.
I shamelessly recommend this morning we had a really, really moving and I think we had an awful lot of emails with something that might be interesting for a lot of people. We had Nadine Doris on the program this morning whose husband, when he was terminally ill, asked her if he could go to Dignitas. He didn't do that and then just as he was passing away, he said he was pleased that he'd had his final months at home with his wife and his daughters.
We also had Jonathan Dimbleby on the program, whose brother, Nicholas, died of motor neuron disease. And he was absolutely convinced that this change from his family's experience is the right one. And we just had a really interesting, very nuanced calm and full conversation about it on the program this morning that from my inbox, I could just see a lot of people found it helpful and interesting. And I think, as you said, Paddy, a few minutes ago, everyone has a story.
And for our politicians trying to pull that together into a consensus, I think it's very, very hard. Liz Kendall said in her closing sort of passionate, very passionate remarks on this, she said, look, even if we took, even if we took much longer, everyone will always disagree. And that's a difficult, that's a difficult status quo, isn't it?
and the point that we move on from on that summary, because everyone is disagreeing again in the other story we're about to discuss, which is the deal done at the COP Summit.
We've been joined by Grea Jackson, who's host of the Climate Question podcast and radio show, and never busier, I suspect, than when a environmental summit's on with all most of the world there. The biggest, you know, meeting of leaders generally is at these annual COP Climate Conferences, which has gone to a clinch last moment cliffhanger deal, which let some of them walked out. Then what happened?
Oh, gosh. I mean, it's been a really dramatic 24 hours. As you say, people walked out when this deal was tabled £250 billion a year from richer countries to poorer countries. That was rejected. Countries walked out. And now we've got a draft on the table that has been approved. The gavel has dropped and it is 300 billion a year. That's US dollars. So about £240 billion a year.
And what does it tell us about the fact that there was an agreement because, you know, cops often called a cop out. There's big doubts about whether this year it really had that much meaning because lots of big countries didn't turn up. Trump's on his way back to the White House. So what does actually getting a deal done represent?
Look, these cops are all about small iterations. They're not about big deals. We want tiny, small iterations ratcheting up of the process. And that's all we get at these cops because it's 200, nearly 200 countries trying to agree with all sorts of different interests, right? So that's what we've seen today. But lots of people are very disappointed by the money that's been put on the table. Why are they disappointed?
Because 300 billion, I mean, it's not a small chunk of change, right? It's still a huge amount of cash. Well, so the figure that was asked for before we began was $1.3 trillion a year. So you can imagine getting 300 billion is far shorter than what people expect. Which would be a third of that figure. Exactly. Yeah. So it's much, much less. I mean, when we say, you know,
Is that a huge amount of money? I mean, that's, as you say, £240 billion. If we think of the NHS budget in England, that's £181 billion. And you know, Greg, this much better than me, that £300 billion, is that not meant to help the developing world?
do the two big things which is mitigation and adaptation which is to transfer to renewables and to cope with the effects of climate change for the entire developing world are having a sum of money that's not a million miles away from the NHS budget in England.
Yeah, exactly. This is exactly what the money is for, right? And actually, if you think about what developing countries are doing, they're on the front lines of climate change, they're experiencing more and more extreme weather, less and less able to pay for that extreme weather, ratcheting up more and more debt, which means it costs even more money to borrow money in the first place to recover from these events.
And we, in the richer part of the world, we had our industrial revolution earlier. We belched out fossil fuels for 200 years. So the idea is a richer country should pay. Delhi is surrounded by smog at the moment. You can't see. And yet the Indian Prime Minister says this is a, what did he call it? An optical illusion this deal.
Yeah, the minister, his minister in charge, they reject the deal. The gavel was dropped and she immediately went on and said, we don't accept this agreement. We don't accept this draft proposal. So, you know, there's been lots of reaction like that from various developing countries. I've seen atrocious betrayal, disaster.
I mean, if you look at the UK reaction, it's a bit different. I mean, I was reading Ed Malaban's social media feed this morning and he was saying, you know, look, this is a step forward. We didn't get everything that we wanted here, but it is a step forward and we've re-put the UK forward as a climate leader again. And what's interesting is he was keen to stress that actually it didn't mean more climate finance money was going to be coming from the UK
he was actually stressing that this is a really big opportunity for British businesses to invest in other countries. And it's a message we hear from Starmer too. This is about the race for jobs. But it is a big political fault line, isn't it? Because you do hear a lot of argument from, broadly from the right, but not just from the right, that net zero is net growth. I mean, that's the sort of political fault line now.
I'm not saying that. Well, I think, you know, we're about to get the Donald Trump presidency and Laura had peers Morgan on and Laura said to peers who obviously knows Donald Trump. So Donald Trump's not terribly keen on this agenda. And he said, well, I mean, I think the thing about Donald Trump is he just believes on this. You need to take people with you. Donald Trump has described climate change as a big
hoax Jerry Baker in the Times who makes a big effort to understand and be fair to Donald Trump had a piece in the Times a few days ago talking about his administration is now going to be packed full of people he described as fossil fuel facilitators. Donald Trump's going to pull out of the Paris Accord. This is going to be a very different US approach.
Yeah, and I mean, there's no doubt about the amount of carbon emissions that are going to go into the sky, you know, now that Trump is going to be coming into parrot something like 400 billion tonnes of excess carbon between now and 2030. That said, there are lots of economists that say the march to green economy is inevitable. It's unstoppable. And that's because renewables are so cheap. Even under Trump's last reign of power, we saw solar more than double in capacity and in still capacity, wind went up by 50% record numbers.
And it's because it's so cheap, it's so much cheaper than oil and gas. But isn't part of this actually that businesses, big Western businesses, are to a large extent, not a complete extent, but to a large extent, they already set on a path to this transition. And yes, you can have the big institutional frameworks. I'm not saying that they don't matter, but actually much of big business has already sort of voted on this, if you like. Hasn't that also been a big part of this picture? Maybe the big institutional frameworks matter less now that a lot of the business world is already on that journey.
Yeah, I think there's certainly, I mean, if you look at the inflation reduction, big back. Yes, exactly. You know, that's all nearly £400 billion fannelled into clean green tech. And actually a lot into red states as well. So they're really keen. There's going to be a lot of pushback if Trump does want to reverse some of these.
But initiatives. If you look at the nutcracker situation for Volkswagen, they bet on the EV future, electric vehicle future, and whereas what's been happening there is the consumers aren't all moving enthusiastically because the range of these vehicles is not, as promised, you can't find the top up stations that you can with a good old fossil fuel. China moved in with the tech and the car industry, you talk about big business, the car industry is a very
Electric way, pardon the pun, of getting to grips with this argument. Talking about EVs, there's a company called Tesla, which I believe is a bit of a leader. That will go nowhere. So Tesla, I'm told, sources tell me they make electric cars.
And Tesla is headed up by Elon Musk. And Elon Musk is like glued to Donald Trump at the moment. And Piers Morgan was making the point to you, Laura. He takes climate really serious. He has a particular interest in electric vehicle cars doing rather well. So that is an interesting influence, essentially.
Yeah, and I think what's going to be quite interesting with the Trump election is if we are going to see these tariffs, particularly 20% tariffs on electric vehicles in the US, for instance, coming in from China, because that really could sort of stall things along, particularly when it comes to EVs.
Well, I think that you have put more light on this in a few minutes than I've managed to do in about 20, 20 years. Lord, you've been here. Can you come every weekend and just talk about other subjects? Anything? Can you be our friend? No, I mean, as well. No, no, as well. Not instead, as well. I'll need to get some gold shoes.
Yes, it's the look we should have said at the beginning. It is a Star Trek look really today. Thank you. Well, if I do that, it's a bit more Star Trek. And I'm Jogfi teacher. Yeah, always. Double cord drawing. Double cord. So we say, thank you very much, Nick. You're an absolute legend. You work all the time. So do you. And it's cool. You sound like you're a starmer. Works good for you, Paddy. Works good for you. I remember my first job. Nora, we're going to miss you next week. Yes, I'm not hearing it. So we say goodbye to you and bye to everyone listening. Goodbye. Bye. Bye. Newscast. Newscast from the BBC.
Thank you so much for making it to the end of Newscast. You clearly copyright, Chris Mason. Ooh, stamina. Can I gently encourage you to subscribe to us on BBC Sounds? Don't forget, you can email us anytime. It's newscast.bbc.co.uk. And if you would like to join our Discord community to talk about everything Newscast related, there is a link in the description of this podcast. And don't be scared, it's super easy to click on it and then get set up.
Or you can WhatsApp us on 0330-123-9480. And I promise you, we read and listen to every single message. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Bye.
