EMQs: Can the G20 still keep the peace?

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2:05George Osborne: The Chancellor of the Exchequer. Getting a lesson from the Shadow Chancellor on how to balance the books is like getting a lesson from Dracula on how to look after a bloodbath.

2:14Ed Balls: Egg balls. A steady-as-she-goes budget. What kind of ship does he think he's on, the Titanic? Hello, Mary Celeste.

2:22George Osborne: Welcome to EMQs from Political Currency. With Ed Balls and George Osborne.

2:32Ed Balls: So hello and welcome to EMQs, Ex-Ministers' Questions. And George, I am about to convey to you very exciting news. We've had an email from following our conversation last week about adverts, famous adverts from the 70s and the 80s. and it's an email from Premier Foods, Zara at Premier Foods, the owners of Mr. Kipling and other well-known brands, saying that we heard Ed Balls and George Osborne on the latest episode talking about how much they love and enjoy Mr. Kipling's products. We'd like to send them a selection of treats since they're such big fans. Would it be possible to get an address? We are going to get a selection of Kipling's cakes, isn't that?

3:11Ed Balls: I mean, and the great thing is, you know, however long the post takes, they'll still be fresh because that is the nature of a Kipling's case you know they really last they are exceedingly good they're exceedingly good I actually thought to myself you know what else are you a big fan of I really like a Domino's pizza don't you I quite like driving a Ferrari do you well I mean a Ferrari and this thing did I get a car to drive for two days I'm not sure where you might get an hour in a Ferrari but you might get a couple of pizzas from Domino's and you know what else do you think?

3:45George Osborne: We could get Domino's yes but what's wrong I'm a big fan of Bordeaux wine

3:51Ed Balls: I don't think Bordeaux is a brand I think you might need to say you know Chateau Eau Brion

3:57George Osborne: there you do see I always knew you were a champagne socialist at heart just just named one of the top one of the top Bordeaux but don't you remember the ad those in the know choose Bordeaux do you know what that was on tv it was like from the whole bordeaux region when i was a kid and there was that lovely cheese as well du vin du pain and du bossa anyway i've already do it yes almost everyone younger than us is going what on earth are they talking about but that was the point we were making and we've lost the collective memory of these uh these great ads and advertising

4:32Ed Balls: slogans for my yes we don't want packets we don't want packets of smash please we don't really we're going to get on to our um questions we had a really good um question for one of our listeners steve coventry who asked us to talk about the industrial strategy um he actually sent it to us before the document was released on monday and he asked whether we think the government will actually stick to it and make a difference but then following the industrial strategy on Monday. Today, the government is producing its trade strategy. And this time, for a comment and a challenge to us, we've gone to the top.

5:14Ed Balls: We've gone to the trade minister who is publishing the trade strategy himself. We talked about him on our main episode last week. We talked about him on our main episode talking about welfare reform, but Trade Minister Douglas Alexander is now going to talk about trade.

5:34George Osborne: Hi Ed, hi George. As a regular listener to Political Currency it's good to be able to offer you this voice note. We're very proud in the government of the three trade agreements that we struck with the US, with Europe and indeed with India in recent weeks but they're really foundations to be built upon, beginnings not endings, which is why this week along with the industrial strategy we've published our new trade strategy. We can't afford to be one club golfer, simply producing ever more free trade agreements, important though free trade agreements can be. As a services superpower with 81 % of our economy services based, we need also to be looking beyond the border at the new instruments of trade that we can use to support British exports and support British goods.

6:17We also need a pragmatic patriotism, a clear-eyed sense of the UK's national interest in a geopolitical,

6:25George Osborne: geoeconomic and technologically changing world. That's why we'll promote what we can, but protect what we must. We'll expand and sharpen also our range of trade defence tools in our toolbox to be able to respond to unfair competition if it's needed. That's the overall approach of the trade strategy. my question to you Pierre would be to George why didn't the Conservatives publish a trade strategy and to you Ed what do you think of that as a Labour trade strategy? Yeah so thank you Douglas for contributing to our podcast and for being one of our listeners and by the way I think congratulations to you for doing what neither Ed nor I have had the courage to do which is go back into politics you know he lost his seat in Scotland Douglas Alexander and then he re-stood after a period of being out of politics and now he's a minister in the government and as people who heard him trying to explain the government's position on welfare will know he's a pro at these sorts of things and a veteran and that's a good thing.

7:32George Osborne: So directly to your question of why didn't we publish a kind of trade strategy? Well I mean First of all, when I was Chancellor, we were in the European Union. And so a lot of the trade strategy was dealt with by the European Union itself, trying to strike trade deals with big other trading blocs around the world. And we absolutely sort of supported that and promoted that. And then we did have, you know, we had a target when I was Chancellor of doubling British trade by the year 2020, when I was there, and to a trillion pounds. And we did introduce and I did introduce things like a lending facility for exporters, essentially export finance.

8:14George Osborne: So we did have instruments of trade policy. But fundamentally, if you were in the EU, it was up to the EU to strike these trade deals. Once we left the EU, there was, you know, what kind of amounted to a trade strategy, which a series of trade secretaries. In fact, the trade department didn't really exist as a standalone department after until Brexit. And then, you know, Liz Truss was the best example of this as trade secretary. And this was actually the reason she ended up, I think, becoming the prime minister. She went around the world and grabbed the headlines by striking deals with different countries.

8:54George Osborne: And the Tories made a huge amount of this. But they kind of neglected the fact that Brexit had been a hugely protectionist move by the UK. that trade was shrinking, particularly small and medium-sized business trade, with the rest of the world. And that was because they neglected the central export markets of the UK, which were the European Union and the United States. They could never do the trade deal with the United States, despite endlessly promising it. It turned out we were, as Obama said, at the back of the queue. And then when it came to the EU, we forced a hard Brexit. So we essentially came out of those trading arrangements like the customs union.

9:35George Osborne: And I would say, and this is not to diminish what Douglas and his department are doing with their trade strategy, the most important thing that this government has done on trade is to conclude the trade deal with the EU. The US trade deal and the Indian trade deals are also important achievements. And from what I hear from those on the inside, the kind of final two days of negotiating with Donald Trump recently over concluding the trade deal were wild. And he was phoning Keir Starmer directly. Keir Starmer was in an Arsenal game. Donald Trump just called him on the mobile phone and said, you've got to include ethanol in the trade deal.

10:16George Osborne: And Starmer was like, yeah, OK, which I fully support. You had to get the deal done. But broadly with the trade strategy, I wouldn't neglect that the European arrangements, improved as they are, could be improved still further. And you can publish a strategy, but ultimately what you really need are deals. And I would not think job done with the EU. I would continue to look for ways to strengthen and deepen our trade relationships with our most important export markets.

10:44Ed Balls: So I agree with that. And I think the one thing that this trade strategy doesn't do is fall into that Liz Truss trap, given the impression that somehow after Brexit, you can more than make up from your loss of trade with the European Union through trade deals with India or Australia or New Zealand or other countries across the Indo-Pacific region or Latin America. because we know that Europe is by far our biggest trading partner. And that's what this trade strategy says. I think the answer to Douglas' question to me is that it would be so easy for a Labour government to go along with that sort of American Democrat populist turning its face against globalisation and trade on the grounds that it has been damaging to workers and to working people, and they're not doing that.

11:47Ed Balls: They are embracing a vision of Britain as part of the global trading system. They're actually going further. I don't know whether you noticed this, George. They are, as part of the strategy, signing up to the new international trade dispute system, which has been put in place by the WTO. It's called the MPIA. the Americans refuse to participate in the WTO trade dispute resolution system. They refuse to appoint new judges in the, I think, the first Trump administration. The WTO set up an alternative mechanism strongly supported by the Europeans. China a member. The Americans refusing to be part of it, very critical of it.

12:29Ed Balls: And the British government in this trade strategy is choosing to join that WTO regime. I think it's the first time since Christmas you see the Labour government clearly taking an alternative approach to doing what the Trump administration wants. And they are doing it because they think that's the right thing to do for our wider trading relationships with the European Union. The focus on services and breaking down non-trade barriers and services completely right so i think this is is good stuff and it is um no surprise to me it's been driven by douglas alexander and it's an important part of the industrial strategy which was a bit overshadowed by events at the beginning of the week and we'll probably want to come back and look at this industrial strategy you know question mark is there enough money behind it question mark does it compensate for some of the hits businesses taken on for example national insurance um and the rise there.

13:26Ed Balls: Is it too centralising? Is it really engaging with the mayoral combined authority agenda? I still think the biggest worry I have on the industrial policy agenda is that the government's rhetoric, especially the political rhetoric from Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, sounds like being pro-business means backing the big businesses we work with. And if they say deregulation means having weaker competition policy which gets in our way that somehow that's a good pro-business pro-industrial policy thing to do and I think that is the opposite of what you want if you believe in proper business dynamism and market dynamism and Douglas's paper is about allowing competition through trade to work and put under pressure but not in an unfair way British companies if they're not doing a good enough job compared to international companies who can provide services or goods for lower prices in a more efficient way so I like this trade strategy and it's interesting isn't it that neither your government or our government when we're in the European Union thought in that sort of holistic strategic view of trade it was partly as you said the commissioner's job but we also never think really in terms of

14:43George Osborne: currency because for a lot of countries the trade strategy is devalue your currency isn't it or keep your currency weak and um not at least since uh black wednesday have we um sought to manage the value of our currency even though you know the u.s dollar is down 10 percent um over recent months that's one and that's probably helping u.s exporters isn't it our problem is we were so

15:05Ed Balls: successful and popular the currency kept going up which um you know but that's just sometimes that's the price, George, of success.

15:13George Osborne: It is true that your pounds went a lot further when our governments win. Anyway, we're not solely taking credit for that. We should get on to our next question. Our next question is from Maddy. Hello, as in George, I hope you're both well and apologies for the background noise. I'm actually sending this from Glastonbury Festival. It was really interesting to hear you talk about the G20's potential resurgence in last week's podcast. And as you mentioned, I agree that it can definitely lean towards being quite performative, but it can also still serve as a valuable multilateral forum where global players who wouldn't usually sit around the same table can come together.

15:52The G20's communique has previously included really clear language, stating that the use or threat of nuclear weapons is inadmissible. Do you think it's symbolically or diplomatically important for member states to reaffirm that this year even if the forum itself is largely performative and the second thing that i wanted to ask you is brazil who are strongly against nuclear weapons pushed for slightly stronger language in the communique last year stating we recommit to advancing the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and a safer place for all and will uphold our obligations in that regard so what i want to know is if you were south africa who are this year's hosts and another vocal supporter of disarmament and a signatory of the TPNW, would you consider putting non-proliferation on the agenda this year to try and hold nuclear weapon states to account?

16:43Thank you.

16:44Ed Balls: I think this is a really good question. And I don't know enough about how the G20 has worked in particular in the space of nuclear proliferation and managing that. But I think that the point Maddy's making there in the broader context of the G7 I think land with me having a G20 process which gets governments together builds relations between you know countries which don't always kind of work together in every forum I think that's a good thing to do and a way of trying to avoid conflict and to find commonality and I think that there's no doubt the British government's relationship with China economically deepened because of our engagement in the G20 in the 2000s and then into your period in the 2010s.

17:37Ed Balls: And I hope that if we need to keep the pressure on around nuclear non-proliferation to avoid future Irans, maybe the G20 is the forum for that. My question is this, given that Donald Trump, I think you said this last week on our podcast, Donald Trump's going be hosting the G20. You think about Mark Rutter and his daddy moment at NATO this week. If you are the G20 countries and you're thinking, if you're the Sherpas meeting and you're thinking, what is something which we could have on the agenda now, which could come to fruition, which Donald Trump would enjoy holding and agreeing at a G20 meeting?

18:17Ed Balls: What's something which he might be up for? What might it be? I don't think it's going to be something around open trade. We can be pretty clear about that. Sorry, Douglas, the G20 is not going to be the right forum for you to pursue your trade ambitions, or at least not comfortably. But I wonder, I was thinking about, you know, could you get David Natenberg involved in cleaning up the oceans? Could you get Donald Trump involved in that? How about cooperation on immigration and tackling human trafficking and the wider sort of, you know, exploitative gang-based movement of people around the world are these things where donald trump could be persuaded the g20 could be a conversation worth having you know we can say at the end that it's all down to him and he can get the credit for it he can get the nobel prize for what's ever as announced but i think it's worth thinking now if you are a g20 country like the uk what could we start now which might be something that trump could be persuaded to own um in the coming years well i think you're making a good

19:19George Osborne: observation about how best to use the G20. So the G20 doesn't have like a permanent secretariat. It's not like the IMF or the World Bank or the UN, where you can go to a big building in the United States or Geneva or wherever, there are thousands of people working for it. The G20 rotates from one country to another. And ever since it started meeting at a leader's level, it used to meet at a finance minister's level after the Asian financial crisis, didn't it? But the end of the 1990s. But it's met at a leader level since the global financial crisis in 2009, 10. And it doesn't have a kind of, it doesn't have any rules.

20:00George Osborne: It doesn't have a sort of lawmaking treaty-based capacity in the same way that the IMF or the UN does. So the UN, you know, signatories of the UN are supposed to be bound by the resolutions of the Security Council, for example. G20 can just issue communiques. But that doesn't mean they can't be, A, it doesn't serve a very important purpose of regularly getting together the world's most powerful countries, and for that not to be extraordinary or require a special summit. So the fact that the Chinese president and the American president are scheduled to meet every year anyway at the G20, or indeed the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, you know, that's not, that's quite useful to kind of maintaining open channels of communication at the top.

20:48George Osborne: Maybe not with Russia at the moment because of Ukraine, but when the G20 was created. And so I think the G20 does perform an important function. I think it is interesting, I did hear this in Washington when I was there recently, that Trump is much more interested in the G20 than he is in the G7. G7 is much, much more collegiate closer informal club g20 is very formal um but uh he is hosting it and i think he would regard crown prince of saudi arabia mbs or the president of china or the president of indonesia or the prime minister of india as being you know the big players in the world rather than you know his mates Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron and so on from Europe so to the G20 I think it's a good thing that the G20 is getting a reboot a bit under Trump and you're right that the best way to get it to do things is to actually commission work from other agencies other international bodies like the World Trade Organization or like Interpol or like the IMF to produce a report by the time of the next G20.

21:59George Osborne: And that's where the G20 has been used most effectively. So on nuclear nonproliferation, there is a whole world of treaties around nuclear nonproliferation that countries are bound to. But obviously, as you've seen very recently with Iran, they are fraught with problems of enforcement. The Israeli action against Iran was prompted by Iran's failure to comply with international rules on non-proliferation. So you can have it in the communique, but I don't know whether there's any kind of consensus now in the international community between China and America and Russia and so on on trying to contain nuclear non-proliferation.

22:38George Osborne: And if there isn't, then there's not much point having it in the communique. And the truth is that South Africa and Brazil are minor players in this. Although South Africa, interestingly, is one of the very few countries that gave up a nuclear weapon. White South Africa, the apartheid South Africa, did have a nuclear weapon, which they gave up after the fall of the apartheid regime. And what do you think of human trafficking? So I think human trafficking is a very good one, because I think everyone's got an interest in containing illegal immigration. And I thought the other one that came to mind when you raised this question of what would Trump support, fentanyl.

23:13George Osborne: You know, he's often tried to get fentanyl, which is that synthetic drug which is doing such damage to Americans. You know, many of the chemicals are smuggled out of China. The president of China says he supports control, you know, doing more to try and deal with it. Trump has tried to link fentanyl to various U.S. trade deals, action on fentanyl, including in Canada.

23:35Ed Balls: And Mexico. And Canada, Mexico and China are all members of the G20.

23:39George Osborne: Yeah. So something like that. But I would say if you were Britain, OK, you could be thinking about the Trump G20. But Keir Starmer is going to host the G20 in 2027 because it's coming around to Britain again after Gordon Brown's summit. That's how long it's been since Britain hosted the G20. And so that will be a big moment for the Starmer Premiership. And I think you do have to be starting to think now in 2025 what to land in 2027. And he will have, you know, he's been ably assisted by someone who used to work with me in the Treasury, very ably, by a very bright civil servant, Jonathan Black, who's been the G20 Sherpa.

24:18George Osborne: Anyway, but he will be replaced by Michael Ellum, who we also know, who's becoming the G20 Sherpa. So he's got the brightest and the best brains of the British civil service to pick on. And I would be trying to think, what is the centerpiece of my 2027 G20?

24:39Ed Balls: Very interesting. Maddy, you have provoked a very interesting set of thoughts which could shape the future of the globe in the coming years. So thank you. That is why it's always good to send a question into EMQs here at Political Currency. We'll take a break and then we're back after that with a very exciting question.

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26:42Ed Balls: So welcome back. Our next voice message is from William Meknig, one of our kitchen cabinet members from the US. And if you remember, he actually asked us a question about what we'd borrow from American politics. And we said, when we answered it, I wonder what William would suggest. And this time he's come back to us with an interesting idea himself. Hi, Ed and George. Will here. Thank you for your generous answers to my question. I often listen to the podcast in the evening while checking cattle pastures. And from the perspective of the Kansas prairie, one element of American politics stands out as prime for export.

27:19dynamic local government. It seems to me the rigidity of council tax makes it a major obstacle to effective English devolution, and even for a center-right American, it seems a bit regressive. Last year, Tim Leunig of Onward published a proposal that would replace council tax and stamp duty with proportional property taxes paid toward local services on house values below 500 ,000 pounds with an additional national levy on the value above 500 ,000 pounds. This policy would liberate councils to vary rates commensurate to their requirements and open up new political space for the government by severing the link between property tax and local services.

27:58Well, first of all, I love the idea of him listening to our podcast

28:03George Osborne: as he's checking the cattle pastures on the Kansas prairie.

28:08Ed Balls: Did you know that Home on the Range, Give Me a Home Where the Buffalo Roam is actually the state song of Kansas. And it was it's the lyrics of a poem written by Dr. Brewster M. Higley in Swiss County, Kansas in 1872. And so, you know, it's a Wikipedia or chat, GBT. It's just deep personal knowledge of Kansas cultural history.

28:38George Osborne: and you know give it give it i don't think it is the buffalo roaming isn't it the deer and the antelope brooding i don't want to pick up on the language home home with a buffalo you could also

28:48Ed Balls: go do home home on the range song by neil young and these are all you know i was thinking about music in glastonbury and obviously um if you're a kitchen cabinet member you'll be listening to this while getting ready for your glastonbury evening you know just a few little musical political william mechnick thoughts with a kansas cattle theme yeah anyway so

29:13George Osborne: well i mean what you're proposing is what in britain would have been you know was called a mansion tax by its opponents which is a property tax and now obviously we do have a property tax in council tax but it's not nearly as onerous as the property taxes that many US states, like particularly New York State and California, levy, where you have to pay essentially 1 % of the value of your house every year in tax. And that can be, you know, obviously for expensive houses, that can be like hundreds of thousands of dollars. And in Britain, you know, the most expensive mansions in London, owned by the richest people in the world, will still pay council tax of only maybe£3 ,000 a year or something.

29:55George Osborne: And when I was in government, I've talked about this before on the podcast, I did look at whether you could introduce new bans of council tax for houses worth like 5 million pounds, 10 million pounds, you know, some of the most expensive houses in the country. And that didn't happen. David Cameron didn't want to go down the mansion tax route. And I think it's a bit surprising that Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves haven't gone down this route. But what you're proposing here, William, is something much more akin to a pure property tax, which is a percentage on the value of the house. And then you've linked it you know one of the problems with the property taxes if it's raised locally then you know kensington and chelsea council get a load more money than um you know witness council in the northwest of england because there are many more expensive houses because just so you're saying like government could keep said central government would keep revenues from houses worth more than a half million pounds i think it's an intriguing idea no one wants to touch property taxes because they've proved to be a bit of a third rail in British politics.

30:56George Osborne: The last person who really tried was Margaret Thatcher and it led to her downfall over the poll tax or the community charge, as she called it. So I can see why people are a bit nervous, but I think you could go back into it. I'm not sure I'd get rid of council tax. I don't think you need to. And I think you can create something akin to your idea, William, or to be fair, onwards idea, with something like additional bans of council tax.

31:22Ed Balls: Of course, let's not forget that the reason it's off the agenda is because it was ruled out by the Chancellor when she was Shadow Chancellor. I think in an interview with the Daily Telegraph before the election, no increase in capital taxes. And in government you did introduce housing taxes on the transaction or increased them through stamp duty. We did it as well. But in terms of capital values, this is not something which we've touched. But there may be moments where Rachel Reeves wishes she hadn't made that commitment because compared to some of the tough decisions she's having to think about at the moment maybe William this is something that she might have been considering but thank you for your question and you know good luck out on the prairie tonight

32:07George Osborne: not a great at all

32:09Ed Balls: do you think William goes on a horse William could you send us a photo we'd love to see a photo of you out there on the prairie do you think he's Kevin

32:17George Osborne: Costner style in Yellowstone is he listening to political currency has he got a gun with him that's what i mean look it's up to

32:25Ed Balls: william for what he puts in the photo but um we'd love one um what's our next question so we we said

32:31George Osborne: when we did um the live emqs at the south by southwest festival which was a great success i think the festival got great coverage um that um we some people wanted to ask questions but we didn't have time to take them as questions so and we would try and answer questions over the coming weeks and this is a really good question from Michael Cassidy. This is Michael Cassidy from the City of London. I am new to the kitchen cabinet and by the way I should say that that's all down to the excellent quality of the show to both of you. Thank you very much. Most worthwhile. This one's for George. George I was your first chairman at the Garden City project at Eppsfleet in Kent at the time, 2014, it was an innovation in Tory housing policy, very welcome for that.

33:26There have been some 4 ,000 homes now built, they're all sold and occupied, it's been a great success, but there's no town centre and there's a particular reason for that. Natural England have noted a host of rare, jumping, chalk-loving spiders where the shops and offices should be, right next to the station. The effect of their recognition of said spiders is that no building is to be permitted, and and on the very site where the town centre would most thrive. So I'd like to put you, based on the fact that it was your original project and you should take credit for it, what would be your view now if you were in government and had the chance to override the natural England ruling, given the fact that there's 300 million of treasury money at risk from the original commitment in 2014.

34:42I'd be most grateful for your thoughts on that. Thank you so much. I have to say, you know, Michael, I mean, why?

34:54Ed Balls: When we're building all these houses, needs a town centre do we really think a group of chalk loving spiders is more important and you know isn't nature adaptable and don't kind of species move on to different habitats i've just never understood this idea that you kind of block important developments because of newts or spiders or in the case of the seven barrage wading birds i mean you know i'm all for preserving diversity and supporting species but you know chalk loving spiders really i'm afraid this is where the british state has got and gone completely bonkers you know there are major developments that are held up because of concerns about you know wildlife which and these are not these are not these are not the rarest animals or insects in the world at all and you end up with ridiculous situations where i

35:48George Osborne: remember when they built a bypass in my constituency you know you're spending several hundred thousand pounds on every newt you're saving uh and we saw with hs2 recently uh that they were going to spend a hundred million pounds on a sort of bat protector thing that was going to go over the railway uh i mean you know i like bats i think we should protect bats but there is but there is a whole industry that's built up around you know in that case it was not not a single bat should be you know get squashed by the train and here you know this was a major project of uh of a new new city or a garden you know an expanded new town a bit like milton keen's or well and garden city in the past which was um ebb's fleet in kent where we you know i with the treasury and the other government departments we identified this as a space where people locally were happy to see additional housing we could put a new you know relieve pressure on the green belt in the southeast by building this new town ebbsfeet we put the transport links in we put money for the housing and michael you know is the chair the first chair of this project is pointing out that the town center which was critical to the whole thing has been held up because of these uh concerns from Natural England.

37:06George Osborne: Natural England is not a charity. It's not like the RSPB or something. This is a government body, which taxpayers pay to bring judicial reviews against other government bodies. And then those other government bodies have to spend taxpayers' money defending themselves. Many millions of pounds, of which the most recent example is the£300 million plus spent on the planning and environmental studies before the Lower Thames Crossing can be undertaken. So, you know, I just think we've you've got to clear away all this. It's really hard to do because there are pressure groups. You know, we all love our wildlife, but we've got to a point where we can't build anything in this country without incurring huge costs and disproportionate costs.

37:51George Osborne: Or indeed that the development doesn't take place at all. And and I think this is an extremely good example of it.

38:00Ed Balls: I think we might get a bit of a reaction to this one. But you and I have both, you know, staked our positions out.

38:07George Osborne: I remember we wanted to put some housing in the old Navy dockyards in Chatham. There used to be a Navy dock in Chatham in Kent. And it was, you know, exactly the kind of place where you should put, you know, it's a derelict industrial site, a Navy dockyard. and no one had mown the grass for ages because it was like a derelict site and some birds had started nesting in the long unmoan grass and we couldn't go ahead this was discussed in the Cameron cabinet that we could not go ahead with the housing development in Chatham because you couldn't cut the grass anymore because now there were birds nesting in the grass so it is it has become ridiculous and it's stopping people being in homes it's building up political pressure and it's causing all sorts of you know if people can't get homes can't get on in life can't provide for their families don't have a better life than the one they grew up with then it leads to people abandoning the center in politics going to the political extremes and the ultimate long-term damage the environment and wildlife would be far greater and so it's also entirely self-defeating if you want to protect our natural habitats and our wildlife.

39:24Ed Balls: I have a feeling that the rare chalk-loving spiders society of Great Britain and Northern Ireland will be in touch with us. But in the meantime, thank you for your question, Michael. We're going to take a break and then we've got one last question from Zoe.

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42:08Ed Balls: Welcome back. Our last question is from Zoe Ryan, one of our gold subscribers. This question has been voiced by one of our producers. Hi, Ed or George. Love the podcast. I'm even a gold subscriber. Last week, you mentioned that even wealthy pensioners use their free bus pass. And it got me thinking to last year when my daughter got surgery at Great Ormond Street from a world leading surgeon. My partner, who often moans about his tax bill, says that he got value from the taxman this year. Do you think there's a way to get people to see the value in the taxes they pay? By the way, following the world-class care from GOSH, she is now a lively toddler.

42:49Ed Balls: So Zoe, thank you for your question. Brilliant to hear your story. And that your, as you say, lively toddler is now doing well. and the National Health Service is the best insurance policy in the world it's value for money it doesn't get everything right it's value for money and delivers absolutely brilliant care especially when you have kind of big health challenges and without getting into any details one of our kids had a very substantial issue and we were regulars over a long period of time at great ormond street and they did a marvelous job for for us total value for money and a marvelous organization the best in our national health service and the best thing that you can do you and your husband can do is um champion what they do um as we're doing here on this podcast

43:45George Osborne: uh well i i completely agree um particularly of the amazing work that great ormond street does And when I was editor of the Evening Standard, you know, our big annual appeal was to help Great Ormond Street. And there's a big redevelopment happening there as well. I mean, I think, you know, it's interesting when it comes to the NHS. There's a big argument about whether people are getting value for money when they turn up at A &E and they have to wait 12 hours. Or, you know, you can't get a doctor's appointment. Or, you know, you phone 111 and after spending half an hour on the phone, you're told to go to A &E.

44:21George Osborne: And I was really encouraged by the news this week that Wes Streeting is introducing a kind of AI chatbot that you can speak to, you know, funded by the British government, supported by the NHS, that will give you medical advice if you've got sort of minor ailments that otherwise you might go and see your GP or go to A &E. And I thought that was a very good sign that we're embracing technology.

44:47Ed Balls: I have to say, I'm really worried about this AI GP chatbot. I'm all in favour of somebody wanting to do a Google search or chat GPT to ask about their symptoms. But if it's an NHS app, where you put your symptoms in, and the NHS gives you advice, all our experiences, it will become incredibly risk averse. You remember the phone line 111 and when you rang up and you said, you know, my son's banged his head and they would very quickly get to, I think you should go to A &E. I just said that.

45:21George Osborne: That's exactly what 111 does.

45:25Ed Balls: And do we really think that an AI chatbot is going to relieve pressure? Well, it is. Or because it becomes risk averse, does it end up telling people you should go to the GP or to A &E just in case? And because it's done in the name of the NHS and people therefore see it in a different way, I just think it will be really risk averse.

45:48George Osborne: Well, if it is, then it totally defeats the object because the NHS has to take some bold decisions to improve the care it offers to people at the GP surgery or the NE. Right. But, you know, a highly developed artificial intelligence interface should give you very, very good medical advice. And this is exactly, you know, actually to Zoe's question, this is where your taxpayer's money is being well spent. Right. Because they got the purchasing power in the British state or the NHS to buy an AI support that you couldn't yourself necessarily afford. Right. But what the point I was getting to, of course, is that is not a substitute for the high end care that the NHS provides, of which Great Ormond Street is perhaps the outstanding example.

46:37George Osborne: And there, you know, you would either have to have, you know, huge personal resources or a very expensive private medical insurance policy to be able to cover the costs of the treatments that they offer. And I think if people were looking for the best of the NHS, they'd look at that kind of service rather than the 10 hours, 12 hours sitting in A &E waiting to be seen. And anything that can be done using Tatsapes money to relieve that would be a good thing. But anyway, I know the hospital. I've been involved in various walks of my life with it. And it is great to hear another fantastic story. and best of wishes to your daughter.

47:26Ed Balls: And good to know, Zoe, that you're also a gold subscriber. I think we've had today a gold subscriber, two Kitchen Cabinet members. I think we've been well represented. And a member of the government. And a member of the government. Well, he's bound to be a gold member. He's bound to be a gold member.

47:42George Osborne: No, no, no. Do you know, I was at this reception with a lot of members of the Labour High Command last week and quite a few of them, Quite a few members of the cabinet came up and said, I'm a gold subscriber. So there you go. If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for everyone else. It's the only... Of course, they all want to be in the real kitchen cabinet. But since it turns out, if you look at the way that disability benefits have been handled, they are not. Why don't they join the other kitchen cabinet, R1?

48:12Ed Balls: It's the only sensible choice. That is it for this episode of EMQs.

48:19George Osborne: Yeah, do keep sending in your voice notes and your questions to questions at politicalcurrency.co.uk and make sure you review the show as that's how the algorithms work in this AI world and help other viewers and listeners find us.

48:35Ed Balls: And enjoy or have enjoyed your Glastonbury weekend, depending upon what you listen to this. I hope you enjoyed it. See you soon. Bye bye.

48:53George Osborne: Thanks for listening to Political Currency. This has been a Persephoneca production.

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50:05What does it take to change your name without losing who you are? Two successful Georgia banks merged and built one new brand, Valant Bank, now the state's largest community bank. Hear Executive Chairman Jackson McConnell and President Spence Mullis in Building Culture Through Brand Change with Valant Bank. From Adrenaline, search Believe in Banking, Episode 91, and listen now.