EMQs solutions special: Burnham reviving Sunak’s national service plan?

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1:43George 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.

1:53Ed Balls: Ed Balls. A steady-as-she-goes budget. What kind of ship does he think he's on?

1:58George Osborne: the titanic they're married celeste welcome to emqs from political currency with ed balls and george osborne so hello and welcome to this special summer edition of emqs ex-minister's questions

2:16Ed Balls: now if it's august and it's summer holiday time and you are a cabinet minister then you know you might be on holiday, you might be sitting by the pool, but the thing you know is in about six weeks time you've got to make a speech to your party conference and have you got any jokes and have you got a policy idea and have you got a theme. And it is so hard not to let that kind of get in your head and take over, but you shouldn't because you should be relaxing. And so what we thought was for all those cabinet ministers worrying and shadow cabinet ministers worrying about their speeches would provide a little light relief so this is george and i answering some of the policy questions we've had over the um the last year which we've not managed to answer in our normal emqs which you know if you're cabinet minister by the pool take your mind off it yeah i actually think that's terrible advice from you why is that so i would i would absolutely use my summer holiday

3:14George Osborne: okay to relax get away from the day-to-day you know not always easy i remember being kind of summoned back on various occasions but you do want to be thinking what are the main things i need to be landing in the autumn it's a time to do a little bit of thinking the thing though is

3:29Ed Balls: if you just bang out your first draft of your speech oh yeah no i'm not saying the thing not to do is sit there thinking i've got to write it i've got to think about it i can't because i'm supposed to be on holiday and then you go stir crazy no but i do think you need to be thinking

3:42George Osborne: there's a moment to try and think of slightly bigger thing which is like what's the central thing I want to land.

3:47Ed Balls: In either case, does listening to our summit EMQs help? It always helps, whatever. I'm not sure.

3:52George Osborne: Whatever situation.

3:52Ed Balls: I'm not sure it helps in either case, because we've done our speeches for party conferences. We've got no speech throughout this summer. And all these policy ideas we're about to discuss.

4:00George Osborne: Maybe party conference speeches aren't what they once were, because of new age of communication. Anyway, here's our first question. It's from Michael, and it's been voiced by one of our producers. Like many mature economies, the UK is facing a demographic crisis, with the number of workers per retiree expected to fall two to one over the next 20 years, from approximately five to one in the 1960s, and the fertility rate falling to its lowest record on level in 2023. Countries such as Hungary offer tax incentives for people to have children. Should the UK government consider similar measures? Right, what do you think?

4:37George Osborne: Tax incentives for people to have children? I would say broadly speaking, these have been reduced in the political system over recent decades, haven't they? I mean, I'm partly responsible for it myself. So child tax credits, child benefit, child trust funds, there've been a variety of things that you get for having children. I don't think they were ever introduced or promoted because people wanted to get the birth rate up, which is what the question here is about. It's more about the families with children, well, A, that there's obviously a strain on their resources, They're more likely to be in poverty and that children growing up in poverty would have poorer life outcomes.

5:19George Osborne: I think that would be fair. I think that's a fair description of the thinking behind Gordon Brown's tax credit reforms or the idea of the child trust fund and so on. Creating some assets for children going forward. As I say, they've been cut back quite a bit and not restored by this Labour government before people get all party political about it. But we've not, you know, the idea, though, of sort of, as I say, the logic has never been, and I've not really heard it in Britain, except from maybe a kind of small part of the Christian right. This is all about trying to get people to have more children.

5:54George Osborne: Interestingly, there was a kind of Nigel Farage's original reason for backing Keir Starmer's plan to abolish the two-child limit that I introduced was not the Starmer argument, which was that kids were in poverty. it was that farage was arguing we want the native population to put it boldly to have more children we want i think he would think white britain's done more children but um apart from that it's not been a big feature of our politics am i wrong about that or well i think you are you are right

6:27Ed Balls: although maybe that's going to change i mean as you say so well braverman also has made that argument for for on exactly the same ground get rid of the two-child limit because we want to have more children being born to families here so that we have to rely less on immigration. And the reality is that, I mean, if you look at the numbers in China, it's astonishing what's going to happen to the Chinese population because of their restrictions and the number of children families were allowed to have in the past. But even here in Britain...

6:53George Osborne: So the Chinese population is going to shrink by 600 million.

6:56Ed Balls: Yes, basically half. But even here in the UK, the reason why we've not seen a bigger rise in the dependency ratio, which is the number of older people compared to the working age population, is because we've had this burst of immigration over recent years, particularly under Boris Johnson. But to the extent that we are going to restrict immigration in the future, the burden on the working population is going to rise unless we have more children being born.

7:26George Osborne: But do you think, are people encouraged by tax breaks for having kids? Does that work? I mean, it might help children live lives that aren't in poverty, I think would be a current progressive argument. But do you think tax incentives? I mean, this was one of the arguments behind the married couples tax incentive, which David Cameron was keen on reintroducing. And I did his bidding as his chancellor, but I was never hugely keen on it myself. That it was some sort of an incentive for family creation. And I remember going to a wedding where someone, obviously totally in jest, thanked me in the audience for the married tax break.

8:08George Osborne: Said, you know, without that, we'd never decided to get married.

8:11Ed Balls: And it was a joke. And the reason why we got rid of the married couples allowance in 1997 in the first couple of budgets was because it turned out by that time you got the married couples allowance if you're married. you also got it if you were a cohabiting couple and if you divorced you both got it so actually there was no incentive at all and i don't think there is evidence that tax incentives encourage people to have more kids that isn't the the evidence which which is one of the arguments against um you're getting rid of the two child policy so i think kirsten is on stronger ground arguing for it around child poverty however there is a question as to what we do if we want to get the birth rate up especially in a world where we're restricting migration more so i mean i think michael lays down a challenge which is what does work or i guess should we care and i think the answer is we probably do need to care because it can go too far and there are other countries which have had a sharper fall in the fertility rate than we've had but i think in general this is a policy challenge and we probably should have a debate about um what we can do to um i'm sure it's have

9:22George Osborne: more kids i would guess but i'm guessing that it's support for child care would be more likely to succeed than simply sort of financial child tax credits that would be my if you're going to go down this but i've seen no evidence that these kind of you know have children for your country

9:42Ed Balls: campaigns work and and the reality is that in the development process if you are better at caring for sick children and therefore you reduce infant mortality it also means that families have less children because they don't have more children as an insurance and secondly if you move away from an agrarian economy where children are essentially part of the economic life of the family in the far more small holding so go back in in our society centuries look at other societies around the world when infant mortality is high and you rely upon the economic contribution of the children you have more children and in a society where you don't think in that way then the birth rate falls and that is the reality of development that's where we are but maybe it can go too far and i'm not sure i know what the lever is maybe we should ask people to send us in um kind of views and we'll come back to this i remember reading a very interesting paper by adair turner on this um a a year or so ago, the former head of the CBI, arguing that this was going to be a big policy challenge for our country.

10:48Ed Balls: And so maybe what we'll do is we'll get Adair to send us in a question telling us why it's a problem and what he thinks we can do to turn this around. Because I'm not sure tax incentives does a job like you.

10:59George Osborne: Right. We'll be back shortly with an even more important question.

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13:10Ed Balls: So welcome back. Now, here's a question from friends of our podcast, both a fellow podcaster and also a brilliant actress and Strictly contestant. Have a listen.

13:25George Osborne: Hi, Ed and George. I think you're both adorable, by the way. This is Emily Dean, host of the Walking the Dog podcast, which Ed has been on, and you were brilliant on it. still holding out hope you'll do it George I am sitting here with my lovely dog Raymond and also with the very wonderful Sarah Hadland who's been here talking about the truth the play that she's currently in in the West End Sarah and I Yes we've got a question for you We've got a question for you boys Well it's sort of on Ray's behalf isn't it Raymond tiny little black shih tzu very desperate what would be your stance dogs in parliament yes or no should they have the vote Do we need to see more of them?

14:05And on behalf of my cat Percy, if dogs, why not cats?

14:11Ed Balls: So first of all, wonderful to have Sarah Hadland on our podcast. And partly she was such a star of many programmes, but probably best known to audiences for the role she played in Miranda. But she was also then a big Strictly star last year. And she was one of those people who, she was older than the average Strictly person, you know, not in her 20s, younger than me, probably about the same age as you. Actually, I'm guessing, I mean, she must be younger than you. Anyway, but she turned out to be utterly... You can see yourself wading into deep water. Deep, deep water.

14:51George Osborne: Remember, she's called, you know, well, sorry, Emily has called us adorable. So we're going to be extremely nice.

14:57Ed Balls: The thing was, she was utterly brilliant on Strictly. What a dancer she was. And then Emily, I've done her Walking the Dog podcast.

15:06George Osborne: If you've not listened to it, it's always done in two parts.

15:09Ed Balls: You walk around. I mean, you know, she calls.

15:11George Osborne: Well, you literally get walking with a dog.

15:12Ed Balls: Yeah, you call it a dog. It's called Raymond. It's quite small. And we went walking around Pontefract Racecourse. Are you suggesting Raymond is not a dog? Let's just say that, I mean, Raymond is a dog, but there's no way he was walking two miles. I mean, as far as I remember, Emily had to pick him up every five minutes. So we had a lovely chat. But Raymond, you know, he's not a big dog.

15:33George Osborne: Right. He's a little, well, we know.

15:35Ed Balls: He's a tiny little black. There are some people who would say he's not a proper dog. But I wouldn't say that.

15:39George Osborne: Right.

15:39Ed Balls: Because he's a lovely little dog.

15:41George Osborne: Right.

15:41Ed Balls: But can dogs be little? Emily says yes. And I guess she's right.

15:44George Osborne: Yeah.

15:45Ed Balls: Although that wasn't my prior, but I've been persuaded.

15:47George Osborne: So you've both cast questions about her age and whether her little dog is big enough to be a dog.

15:54Ed Balls: But I have plugged the podcast.

15:55George Osborne: it's a fabulous podcast anyway uh should dogs have the vote should there be dogs in parliament and um what about cats as well well in my time there were dogs in parliament because david

16:06Ed Balls: blunkett um was a uh at the time a um brilliant cabinet minister okay and his dog was his dogs because he had a series of guide dogs for the blind were always in parliament and they um

16:19George Osborne: they made important contributions well why not be able to bring dogs into the chamber I mean, like, you know, you can bring dogs into some restaurants these days, hotels.

16:29Ed Balls: So rather than getting somebody to walk your dog or getting a kind of dog walker, you basically have everybody with a dog who doesn't want to spend the money as a member of Parliament to bring the dog in. It's also air-conditioned.

16:42George Osborne: I think in the moment, during the hot weather we've had building up to the summer, the Parliament was sweltering, but the chamber was actually air-conditioned.

16:51Ed Balls: You wouldn't ration dogs? Would the dogs fight? Would you throw balls for the dogs?

16:55George Osborne: Yeah. One of the stories I found very amusing when we were in government was we had an environment minister who's a good friend of mine called Greg Barker. And he used to bring his dog into the department where he was, the environment department. And, you know, he was one of the passionate, you know, vote blue, go green ministers who took David Cameron up to the glacier and the huskies to, you know, get us onto issues of climate change and so on. So very influential minister. But he had this little dog and he took the dog into the department. And the dog had a little pillow that could be heated up.

17:34George Osborne: It was like on cold days, not hot days, on like the chamber and the air conditioning. you could put this dog pillow in the microwave and it was made of a sort of i guess a sort of synthetic material that heats up so you put in the microwave it heats up and that becomes like a warm pillow for the dog to sit on during the day and he'd have the dog in his ministerial office while they had meetings but um understandably other people in the department uh complained including to the her majesty's press the the microwave they were using to heat up their lunch was being used to heat up the dog pillow.

18:14George Osborne: So he was told no more dogs. Couldn't he just brought in another microwave? Yeah, or the dog could have got by without having a specially heated pillow. It does seem... But he was a somewhat pampered... Should dogs have their votes, Sarah asks, no. Yeah, probably not, no. Should cats have votes as well as dogs? Well, I think if you're going to give them to dogs, you have to give them to cats. It's one of the issues, isn't it?

18:35Ed Balls: That is true. Although I don't think I would have cats or dogs in Parliament unless they were guide dogs or special kind of, you know, dogs which are there for a particular prescribed reason. Yeah. Although, of course, there are security dogs in Parliament. Are there? Sniffer dogs.

18:49George Osborne: Oh, yeah, that's true.

18:51Ed Balls: I think we should celebrate dogs. However – Well, I've got a lovely dog, Albie, yeah. Could you take him into Parliament? No, he lives, sorry.

18:58George Osborne: Well, yeah.

18:58Ed Balls: You don't go to Parliament anymore?

19:00George Osborne: No.

19:01Ed Balls: I think we've run out of that one. Thank you very much indeed, Sarah. Thank you very much indeed, Emily. And as I say, if you want to enjoy a really cool podcast, walking the dog is great on all your usual platforms thinking about dogs actually didn't

19:13George Osborne: bill clinton deliberately get a dog because they polled and it was like going to be you know average america sorry they polled what type of dog the president should get i've been under massive pressure to get a dog i met barack obama's dog in the way house like it was a portuguese water terrier i can't remember his name i think barack obama had the same problem as me he's been

19:34Ed Balls: lobbied by his daughters right and his wife to get a dog and they all say we'll walk the dog but they don't but they don't and i've always known would a vet walk the dog no way it should be off around the world somewhere and would our kids well you know if they were there they might walk the dog who would walk the dog twice a day moi and am i so would you say moi am i willing to do that That reminds me of the faulty towers. But who really goes pretentious? Moi? Moi. We'll be back after this break with more ridiculous questions.

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22:07George Osborne: So the next question is from Tom, who apparently you bumped into, Ed. He's got an idea on how we solve youth unemployment. Hi, Ed and George. My name's Tom, and I was lucky enough to meet Ed at a Cambridge graduation ceremony over the weekend where he encouraged me to submit a question. At the moment, there are one million young people in the UK who aren't in education, employment or training. And I've been thinking about whether Rishi Sunak's National Service proposal was perhaps dismissed too quickly. Obviously, not everybody wants a year in the military, especially if it was compulsory. But I wonder whether structured schemes in areas with genuine need, such as the NHS, social care, construction or even environmental projects, could give young people valuable skills and confidence as well as something to do.

22:59So my question is, could a modern national service scheme help tackle the UK's NEAT problem? Or do you think there are better means of helping young people into work, training and education?

23:11Ed Balls: I did meet Tom. He's a big fan of our podcast. I was at my daughter's graduation and surprising. I mean, it was a bit like going to a Centrist Dad concert. Surprising how many young people came up to me and said, I'm a big fan of the podcast. I think we have quite a big Cambridge University and wider student, young people. But we want growth in every postcode of our podcast. We do. Yep. And people go to Cambridge these days from every postcode too. But anyway, Tom has this idea. I personally think that Andy Burnham, if he's smart, will have a big push on youth jobs and youth unemployment in the autumn.

23:50Ed Balls: That should be a big theme of his conference speech. And I think he needs to ask some quite hard questions about the government. Is what they are planning to do raising the youth minimum wage at a time when youth unemployment is rising? Is that the right thing to do?

24:04George Osborne: So you might cancel that or hold it back in future years?

24:08Ed Balls: The manifesto made a commitment to equalise the youth minimum wage and the adult minimum wage. And I don't think that's the right thing to do. I was a big champion at having a lower rate for young people coming into the labour market. Because the danger is, if you have to pay the same rate to people with less and more experience, then it's young people who don't get hired. So I would have a look at that if I was Andy Burnham. And there'll be some people who'll kind of shake their heads and say, that's a terrible right-wing proposal. But so what? You should prioritise youth jobs. And I think Andy Burnham needs to have a look at that.

24:36Ed Balls: But there's also things which he and Alan Milburn are going to be doing. If you're going to tighten up eligibility for people getting incapacity benefit and getting languishing in years of unemployment through incapacity benefit, you've also got to be driving the youth jobs agenda really hard and making that a big priority. And so I would go for that. But I'm not sure, Tom, that national service is the right way to go, because the problem is it becomes not only hugely expensive, but also it's very hard to make it compulsory, as you suggest. because you know for the armed forces more widely pushing people forcing people to do things they don't want to do is actually um very hard to make work in practice and you'll get huge pushback from public service deliverers so um if you're going to go for youth jobs program giving people options voluntary ways to do participate in um kind of civil society good thing to do but compulsory I think it's expensive.

25:40Ed Balls: It doesn't work.

25:41George Osborne: Yeah. So there's been a revival of interest in national service. It used to be compulsory to spend, I think, was it two years or one year, serving in the British military.

25:54Ed Balls: Until the late 1950s.

25:56George Osborne: Yeah. My father was one of the very first years that missed it. He was assuming he was going to go into it. My dad did.

26:02Ed Balls: And his brother, two years older, did it. And he didn't because he was born in 1938. 1938. So I think he went to university in 1957. And that was just when it was, I think when he went to university, he went to a college where he could defer and National Service went in the intervening period.

26:22George Osborne: So it was abolished. It was widely welcomed when it was abolished. It was said young people needed to get on with their lives. And, you know, it was a relic of the Second World War and Britain's imperial past. So I would ask the question, why is there interest in it being revived and there are three aren't there three sort of pillars to this the first is what you're talking about which is all these young people lying around unemployed lacking skills um and it's to help them it's a sort of youth employment scheme and youth work readiness scheme because one of the issues is not just skills but your sort of attitude to turning up on time and so that's one thing but there are other ways of addressing that issue and governments have tried various things I mean, the Gordon Brown chancellorship and Tony Blair had the New Deal and David Cameron had a jobs guarantee.

27:12George Osborne: And, you know, Keir Starmer's been talking about it and Andy Burnham's been talking about it. I think one of the problems is all of this has sort of merged into it. No one really knows what these job offers are and these guarantees of work and stuff. But I don't think national service is the solution to that. There's a second thing which has come back only in the last year or two, which is we actually might need to train our country. for future military conflict which was the original purpose of national service and very

27:40Ed Balls: many european countries still have a form of conscription and that is uh you know the army's

27:44George Osborne: way too small for some terrible future conflict and conflagration and russia's on you know on the rise and so on you get various generals talk about this i mean again i think the idea that a sort of conscript army anytime soon is going to be you know required for you the uk or put it this way if you're into a situation where you need a conscript army you are in a absolutely dire a desperate situation. And I don't think any national service would have particularly equipped Britain for that moment. The most compelling answer is that we lost something when we lost national service, which was different communities, people from different backgrounds, different, these days, ethnicities and economic situations coming together.

28:23George Osborne: And it's a kind of, it binds people together in a nation that's fragmenting. And this led David Cameron to create National citizen service which you know i would say tom was a very serious effort to do exactly what you're saying create a modern national service scheme and got around ed's point about it being you know you can't force everyone by saying it's not going to be compulsory but we're going to give strong incentives for people to spend two three months when they're 18 um doing either something connected with the military or um other uniform services or with charities and we're going to and you know all the evidence was people who went on it really enjoyed it and they learned something from it and so on but it hasn't endured and subsequent tory prime ministers always tried to abolish it and david cameron would always get there just in time and tell them don't you dare but it has been

29:13Ed Balls: abolished and then rishi sunak in the 24 election yeah tried to revive the idea of yeah military and compulsory but it fell apart under scrutiny grant shaps the defense secretary could neither of explain how they're going to pay for it or how it would work in practice where would you actually house all of the people who are going to be doing this compulsory national service i mean it's just very hard i mean it's a good thing to do as a as a voluntary initiative but i yeah so it's but then

29:41George Osborne: it becomes more like a sort of duke of edinburgh a kind of massive duke of edinburgh scheme doesn't it rather than which i i personally would you know ramp that kind of thing up get charities to run it Don't try and create some big government service for me.

29:55Ed Balls: Our final question is from Jamie. Hello, Ed and George. This is Jamie from Glasgow, and I am a Gold subscriber and look forward to the weekly podcasts. I had just finished reading Nick O'Stergin's book, and it got me thinking about devolution, and in particular the role of the Secretary of State for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, with each nation having a dedicated seat at the Cabinet table and a team of junior ministers, political advisors and civil servants. Prior to devolution, these would have been significant jobs in Cabinet with large-scale responsibilities. However, since the establishment of the Scottish Parliament and the assemblies in both Wales and Northern Ireland, surely the role of the Secretaries of State for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is somewhat diminished or perhaps even irrelevant.

30:43Are the Secretaries of State for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland required? Could these three jobs be merged into one, for example, a Secretary of State for the Union? So we'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this. Thank you.

30:56Ed Balls: So, Jamie, I think every Prime Minister in the modern era has thought to themselves, this could be a good idea. And every Prime Minister then concludes, it's actually a bad idea. And the reason is because these particular jobs go two way. They are both about being the Secretary of State, which is making decisions on behalf of the UK government and its relationship to the devolved countries. And there's no reason why you can have one person representing the UK government and making decisions in its relationship between the Welsh and the Scots. I mean, in principle, with the Northern Irish. But the second role that person plays is they are also a representative from the devolved country back into the Westminster government.

31:49Ed Balls: And they are, alongside the First Minister, a voice into the UK cabinet. And I don't think credibly you can be the voice of Scotland and also the voice of Wales and also the voice of Northern Ireland. I just don't think if you are a Welsh MP appointed to be the Secretary of State for Scotland and Wales, you're not going to be credible going to Scotland and saying, tell me your concerns, let me represent them to the Westminster Cabinet. I think you can be an absolutely credible chancellor or defense secretary if you are Welsh for the whole of the UK. I think this is the one job which you can't do credibly and not be from that part of the country.

32:34Ed Balls: So that's why in the end, Prime Minister's look at this and say, yeah, I can see why it'd be a good idea in principle, but in practice it won't work.

32:40George Osborne: I essentially agree with all of that. I mean, the problem is they're kind of non-jobs in terms of executive authority these days. I mean, less so the Northern Ireland job. I think that remains a very important real job because of the fragility of the devolution settlement and the ongoing kind of issues there. But in Scotland and Wales, you know, they used to be virtually viceroys. I mean, they had enormous powers. Of course, that's why we moved away from that with devolution in those nations. But can you imagine saying to Scotland, there's no longer a Secretary of State for Scotland? Well, it's interesting to say there's two issues here.

33:13George Osborne: One is you have sort of limited options. I remember in opposition, we couldn't have a shadow Secretary of State for Scotland and a shadow Secretary of State for Wales in the 97 to 2001 Parliament because we didn't have any MPs in Scotland. It would have been even worse to have a shadow Secretary of State for Scotland who's not, you know, got under seats in Scotland.

33:33Ed Balls: And of course, Labour was almost in that position in 2015.

33:37George Osborne: There was only one Labour MP for Scotland, sure enough, he was the shadow Secretary of State for Scotland. He absolutely was. But there was a politician who sadly died a couple of years ago, Michael Ankrum, who, you know, again, there was a period of my life when he was very much a big feature. He was party chairman and he was a smart and interesting individual. But he became sort of shadow secretary of state for constitutional affairs and had the kind of Scottish and Welsh briefs under him. But this was in opposition. and certainly in government absolutely I remember the civil service saying to David Cameron do we really need a shadow secretary of state for Scotland the answer was yes we do um and David Mundell did that job uh exceptionally well we didn't I think in Wales we had the late Cheryl Gillan even though she was the MP for um Amersham because we didn't have a Welsh politician who could do it and at least she was Welsh yes she was Welsh the good thing about Ian Murray was he was both

34:34Ed Balls: Scottish and the MP for Edinburgh South. And so he did tick both boxes in 2015.

34:40George Osborne: I'd say there's a problem, which is that you are limited by law in the numbers of members of the cabinet you can have. There are limits, the number of secretaries of state you can have, which is like, I can't remember exactly, but it's sort of 21, 22 or something like that. And if you fill in the...

34:54Ed Balls: That's Sue Gray saying to you, you've got too many people.

34:57George Osborne: Exactly. If you have your Secretary of State for Scotland and your Secretary of State for Wales, you've kind of taken away key slots in the cabinet for people you you know need my need so i think you probably get away with them being kind of minister of state maybe but you would get a bigger dropping in the scottish press you would welsh press yeah thank you though jamie good question

35:18Ed Balls: hopefully that um we explained why we think so far what you're suggesting has never happened that's it for this special summer edition of emqs and if you are on your lounger with your headphones in and a covenant minister. It's over. Get back to your speech writing. George says you need to be thinking about your big ideas.

35:35George Osborne: Yeah, but you might be, you know, up in the Highlands. You might be walking the Pembrokeshire coast. There's lots of, you know, maybe you're enjoying one of these Scottish and Welsh holidays or indeed visiting the Giants Causeway.

35:47Ed Balls: You still need to get back to work. If you've got any suggestions as to whether we've got our solutions on these policy questions right or wrong, or another EMQ, you can always send us in your corrections and questions. questions at politicalcurrency.co.uk or message us on our socials.

36:03George Osborne: We will see you next week.

36:04Ed Balls: See you then.

36:11George Osborne: Thanks for listening to Political Currency. This has been a Persephoneca production.

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