What The Budget Really Means For Your Money & The UK Economy - Jeremy Hunt

I was the most disliked politician in the country. I commend this statement to the House.

Let's say you were the Chancellor again. What would be your first three things you would do?

Now, the bit I didn't do. A dynamic economy needs animal spirits. If we got the benefits bill down to where it was before the pandemic, that's 47 billion pounds less a year.

What do you think of 1.8 billion being spent on the digital ID?

That's nonsense. Running a hospital in Britain is far, far harder than running a footsie company. I've seen it from the inside. There is a structural problem.

What do you think the likelihood is of Nigel Farage and Reform getting in? And do you think that's a good thing or not a good thing for the country?

I think.

On and around the Budget and just after. Does it feel like the Chancellor is the most hated person in Britain? And have you ever felt like the most hated person in Britain?

I, I have, but, but it wasn't actually after my budgets. It was when I was Health Secretary and the junior doctors went on strike for almost a year.

Wow.

And there were, in fact some Yuga polls saying I was the most disliked politician in the country. And you're still smiling, though. You know, I, well, how I managed, I don't know, but I, I, I did have some, like, pretty, pretty hairy moments. I mean, like. Do you want to tell you one of them? Yeah, please. Like, so one of them. I was. There was a lot. The thing that I think people sometimes don't appreciate is there's a lot of pressure on your family as well. So Lucia used to worry about what would happen if she needed to take the kids to A E. And in fact, she, they would, she would have been absolutely fine because doctors have very strong ethics and, and they would have treated us no differently. But you can understand why she was worrying about that, because was such a hate figure with all the, the junior doctors. In fact, I had laser surgery on my eyes, which you can't do on the nhs, and I was at Moorefields getting it done privately, and it was two days after the junior doctors had announced another wave of strikes. And I, I lay back and I suddenly realized that this operating theater in Moorefields was just full of junior doctors and they were about to put a laser into my eye. You know, it's like.

I thought, this is the, the definition of trust. But the, the worst moment was when. So we had a Easter holiday and we were going to stay with, in fact, my, the friend I started my Business with, in. In who was living in Boston at the time. So we booked these tickets and.

I had to rush back from a vote in Parliament in order to get the plane to Heathrow. And, you know, I was getting the family ready and the kids were probably, I don't know, they were, you know, 4, 6 and 8 sort of thing, so young. And the doorbell rang and I thought it was the Uber or the taxi or something. And so I opened the door and it was the BBC wanting a comment because that afternoon the Junior Doctors, the BMA had announced another wave of strikes and I thought they are now going to get a film of me taking my family with suitcases off to Heathrow and this is just going to be disastrous. Pr. So I thought, what do I do? So I. So I called my government driver and I said, sorry, Keith, I need you to come back and pick me up. I got changed into my suit, back into my suit. I put my jeans in a plastic bag and then I walked out of the front door and did a clip for the BBC saying how disappointed I was there was a strike and then climbed into the government car and got Keith to drive me around the corner. And then Lucia and the kids got into an Uber BBC camera gone by this point and they drove around the corner and I switched into my jeans in the back of the car. And anyway, by this stage, you know, it was this close to getting the flight and it was a, you know, it was a Friday before the Easter holiday, so the roads were absolutely blocked going out of London and we, we arrived with like 10 minutes to spare before the, the check ins closed and we, we got through and you can imagine there were quite a few tensions in the family at this point about dad and his bloody job. And we, we got through and only when we were literally boarding the plane did I remember that because I got my, I got the family's tickets long time in advance, but I didn't get my ticket until the last minute because I didn't know about parliamentary voting and the only ticket left was business class. And so basically I was like, I thought, how do I break this to Lucy? Bloody hell, this is going to be a night overall sweating away. And then, and then basically I thought, well, I'll just, I'm going to settle them in to economy class.

And then there was this.

Quite large American lady who complained to the stewardess, the BA stewardess, about having to sit next to my children on the flight. And I said, madam, I said, I've got a seat in business class. You have My seat and I'll sit here. And the, the BA stewardess, are you sure, sir? And she said, that has never happened in my entire career at ba. And I said, yeah, I thought, I'll get the glory here while I can.

And then the purser came along and said, sir, we have never seen this happen before, but actually we've managed to find three seats in business class, so. So I sent Lucia and the. And a couple of kids up and, and I collected my glory, which I really needed.

Do Labour have a clear plan or a clear vision?

I think that they came into office.

With a very mistaken view of what government would be about. I think they thought that it was going to be a bit like 1997 and they were taking over an economy that was roaring ahead, just as. As Tony Blair and Gordon Brown inherited. And all they really needed to do was put up taxes a little, put a bit more into public services, and then they could say, we're the party that put the NHS back on its feet. Whereas, you know, the world in, in 2024 is very different because we've got these very high levels of debt that we've been talking about that are holding back growth and some big structural challenges. And I think that's only started to dawn on them now.

And unfortunately, in that process, they've lost a lot of political capital. So some of the big changes they might have wanted to do now feel too difficult. Well, I really hope they get their mojo back because they're going to be around for, you know, another three or four years and as a country, we need them to succeed.

I understand now that labor have increased taxes since they've been in power by 70 billion. Does that sound about right to you?

Yep. It's just. I think it might be 66, but that sort of number, yes.

Why are they not looking at reducing their spending?

Well.

The reason they're not looking at doing it is because they find it very hard, not least because the unions are a very big part of the. The labor movement. So when it comes to public sector pay awards.

You know, conservatives have a higher tolerance for strikes if there are disagreements on what's fair. And, you know, that's not necessarily a good thing because you saw we had lots of strikes under the previous Conservative government and they were very disruptive and painful, but we were prepared to take on the unions when we thought their demands were unreasonable and labor is less willing to do that. So that's probably the reason. The other thing is, which I think is, you know, a real mistake is that Labour are trying to hold up this word austerity, which they've turned into a kind of totally negative thing. Whereas, you know, having run my own business, I think you should always be looking to spend money more efficiently and to cut costs where you can, and even more so if you're in charge of the state, which is spending a trillion pounds of taxpayers money. But they've kind of turned any kind of demand for more efficiency into a kind of dirty word. So that's why they're doing it. But.

The mistake here is that if you look around the world, there are parts of the world that are doing really well, and it's North America, it's Asia, it's even places like China. And what do they all have in common compared to Europe, which is in this slow lane of economic growth? They all have lower tax rates. And.

Economists will tell you that one of the reasons for that is that if the state spends too much, it stops the private sector growing, it crowds out private sector investment. By the way, the Office for Budget Responsibility also agree with that because.

They factored in less investment by the private sector as taxes go up. So. But I think as business people, and I'm guessing there's quite a few business people in the audience here, we kind of understand there's something different about it, which is that a dynamic economy needs animal spirits. It needs people who will go out there and take risks as. As you've done, Rob. As I've done, as I'm sure people in this room have done. And so we're going to start our own business, we're going to be brave. And one of the things that makes you hesitate is if the rewards aren't worth the effort. And that's the problem with when taxes get too high.

So I don't know how many hundreds of millions we spend on the NHS and welfare. I would guess it must be hundreds, sorry, billions. I don't know how many hundreds of billions we spend on NHS and welfare and it doesn't look like they work very well at the moment.

Many people are critical of the nhs. When you've had a loved one, in my instance, my dad, go through the whole system. I have to say the criticism of the NHS in my experience was right. It would take five or six hours for an ambulance to turn up, it would take days to get seen, he'd have a new doctor every day. Some of them couldn't really speak English.

It was just.

And I remember it when I was young, I don't ever see it, not to work and Then welfare. You know, so many people now are rewarded for not working and you're punished for working. And to me, this is this not just obvious common sense. And can't they save because you're an entrepreneur. If you went to buy a company and you saw the management accounts, you could shave off 10% of those costs. That wouldn't be too difficult. A couple of hard decisions, let go of a couple of suppliers. But you could easily shave 10, 15% off in. That's 150 billion. And they're not looking at any of the costs. What do we not understand?

Well, the first thing is you're absolutely right to talk about those two areas. Both of them, actually, welfare and the NNHS are about 10% of our GDP. So that's not our taxes, much bigger percentage of our taxes, but our gdp. Of all the wealth we create as a country, about 10% goes on the NHS and 10% goes on welfare. Wow. So that, that is a big amount. And, and neither of them are working the way they should. And, you know, the. Let's talk about both of them. But I'm going to talk solutions because I think there are very good solutions to both of them.

You are bringing the happiness today.

I am trying.

Believe you me, it's an effort, but I am, I am trying, so I'm going to try and talk solutions. First of all, on health, I have to say I was the longest serving Health secretary and so I've seen it from the inside and.

I think it needed two big things. And I did do the first and I didn't do the second. And, you know, I have to hold my hand up. I did not finish all the reforms that I wanted. So the thing that I really objected to in the NHS when I arrived was that all the focus was on waiting times and not on the quality and safety of care. And we were having these horrific scandals, like mid staffs. I had to deal with that within a few months. So I put in place, I looked around and I thought the best system we have on this kind of area is the Ofsted system for schools, which calls a spade a spade. You know, every school is outstanding, good requires improvement or inadequate, and if it's inadequate, the head gets changed. And, you know, I thought, this is a good system. And so I put that in the nhs. And we do call out poor care now in a way that maybe happened in your dad's case, and I'm sorry to hear about that. And the nhs, when I arrived, you were not allowed to talk about bad care in the nhs and people told politicians, you know, if you, if you, if you, you're open that this, this terrible thing has happened and it's a disgrace, then you're letting down the service, you're demotivating the nhs. I said, that's nonsense. You've talk about it if you're going to change it.

And by the end of my time, with that new system in place, 4 million more patients were being treated in good or outstanding hospitals than when I started. And I do think that good NHS care is bloody brilliant. It's just not consistent. Now, the bit I didn't do.

It is unbelievably wasteful and it's unbelievably difficult to change anything in the nhs. And it took me about half or more than half of my time in the NHS to understand that there is a structural problem. I'm not one of these people, by the way, who wants to privatize the NHS or dismantle it. I love the values it stands for, but if you're going to have a free system, you've got to work out how you're going to create the incentives for efficiency and good customer service that you would get in the private sector that you're not going to get in a system that is free. And the thing that's stopping that happening is that it is completely overrun with targets. So, I mean, you know, Stalin would be proud. It puts his tractor factories to shame, frankly. I mean, the average hospital chief executive, by the way, running hospital in Britain is far harder than running a footsie company. I really take my hat off to those guys. They have 18 monthly operational targets. You know, it's A and E cancer elective waiting times. That's 18 and they're monthly. So the moment you arrive, someone from NHS England is on the blower saying to you, well, what are you going to do to improve targets 3, 7 and 14? And by the way, the next figures are going to be reported on Tuesday week. And no hospital in the rest of the world is run like that, not in France or Germany or America. So the chance to make transformational change, which business people completely understand is what you're trying to do is.

Minimal. If you want to like a new IT system, it's really hard to get the bandwidth to put in a brand new IT system that's going to make everything a lot more efficient and digital because you're held on such a short leash. So we should scrap all those targets now. I, I did want to do that and I did reduce them dramatically, but I Thought, if I scrap them when we're not hitting them, everyone's going to say, you know, point fingers and say, oh, he's just scrapping the targets because he wasn't hitting them. So my plan was actually to hit the targets and then get rid of them. And. And I didn't. I didn't get around to it, unfortunately. So there's a Mayor Cooper there. But the result is massive waste, by the way, because, you know, if you're desperately trying to get these 18 operational targets, how much do you really care about whether you're buying your loo paper from the cheapest supplier or whatever it is? And, you know, now compare that to. Now, this is the positive schools. British state schools are an unsung success story. They have become, in the last 25 years, the best state schools in Europe and some of the best in the world. We have the highest reading standards in the Western world now in our state schools. I went to private school somewhere called Charterhouse, and in the 1980s, middle class families would say, if you can possibly avoid state education, go private, because you can't trust state schools. We don't say that now. If you've got a good or outstanding Ofsted school, people are happy to send their kids there. And that is because we don't have any of these targets. We give all the money to heads and governing bodies and we say, you've got Ofsted, we're going to publish your exam results. You know, if you get a bad Ofsted, you'll get fired, but after that, it's up to you. And when you go into a state school, you never see any waste. They are so careful with their money because, you know, every penny is theirs and they know that if they can save it, you know, on one thing, they can use it for a new playground or whatever. So that's the model we need to adopt. And then just very quickly, on the benefits one, this one is so right for reform. And I cannot understand why we didn't hear this yesterday. Every day in the last year, 2,200 people on average have been signed off, not just having to work, but they don't even have to look for work. And it's a number that has mushroomed since the pandemic. It was going down until that point, but it's got really bad. And, you know, most of them are for mental health reasons, anxiety and depression. And every doctor I ever met said, if you've got anxiety or depression, the one thing you need is social contact, you know, so that means being at Work, not at home. And what we should be saying to all those people is, you know, we should be saying, look, we're going to treat your anxiety or depression, but we're not going to give you benefits. And, you know, if we got the benefits bill down to where it was before the pandemic, that's 47 billion pounds less a year within five years. You wouldn't had a single tax rise yesterday. And, you know, if you wanted the whole. The NHS actually has a really good talking therapies service for anxiety and depression, for mild and moderate anxiety depression. People from Sweden come and have a look at it. It's very well respected, costs a billion quid a year, so you could literally double the number of people getting treatment for anxiety and depression. That's how I'd use one of the 47 billion that I save and say, we're not putting on welfare. And so, anyway, there really are solutions and I, I think it's a massive shame we didn't hear that yesterday, but on the other hand, you know, I've got something that I'm. I can argue for as, as what we need to do.

Is there wastage in the Civil Service?

Absolutely. I mean, you know, when I. And I think that we need some big reform of the civil servants, you will not find me criticizing the individual civil servants who work for me because I found them to be really hard working, really decent, and, and I always felt they gave their all. And so I, you know, I think that individually they are great people, but everyone has to work within the structure they're given. And in the Civil Service, I mean, in the treasury, for example, I said, can we stop everyone working from home? Because I was fed up with, you know, every meeting, I had to have this giant TV screen in front of me because, you know, there'd be four or five people dialing in. And I was told no, because we haven't got enough desks now. And, and I discovered the treasury contract is that you have to work from home. You have to work from home for three days a fortnight, and that's the system that they are doing. And don't get me wrong, I think there are, there are times when working from home is. Is a big advance. I think for young parents with kids, it, it can be a really positive thing to help people get back to work more quickly than they might otherwise have been able to do. And I actually think for people at the other end of their lives in their, in their 60s, it'd be better for the economy if people work part time than completely retired. And so if working from home is part of the mix, fine. But for most businesses, I think it is really bad for productivity and creativity and team spirit and the fears and the buzz that you need. And that is something where the culture is completely wrong. So I, you know, it was something that I absolutely wanted to sort out and, you know, had I been around for long, we'd have got to it. I did, though, say that I was going to reduce the size of the civil service to. To the levels it was before the pandemic. And that was how I was going to pay for the increased money we're spending on defense. Saves about 4 billion a year. And that was cancelled by my successor. Within two weeks of them coming into office, they canceled the reduction in the size of the civil service. I do not know why.

Wow. And what do you think of Rachel Reeves continuing to blame the Conservatives for all the mess that we're in right now because she did it at the budget. Again, the Conservative legacy.

Well, the reason that. Part of the reason she's doing it is because George Osborne very successfully pinned on labor in 2010 the fact that the previous Labour government had run out of money. And, you know, he used phrases like they didn't fix the roof while the sun was shining. And he kind of won that argument with the British people. And then Conservatives were reelected in 2015. So I think that what Rachel Reeves is trying to do is a repeat of that. And there was politics in what George Osborne was doing. And in some ways he was right, but in some ways he was wrong. I mean, Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown actually did a very good job in the financial crisis. I mean, they marshaled finance ministers around the world to inject liquidity into the global economy to stop banks going bust, which would have, you know, bankrupted all our economies. Very, very difficult times. And in. In that crisis, they didn't do a bad job at all. And, you know, I think they obviously made other mistakes, but. So there's an element of politics in all of this. But what I would say to Rachel is, you know, you can do your political thing, but, you know, you've got to have a plan to go with it. And as George Osborne was, you know, presenting that narrative, he was also cutting public spending by 19% in real terms. I mean, much bigger cuts than Margaret Thatcher ever did. And so he was taking very brave decisions. And that's what I'm not really seeing from the government. I'd like to know what the plan is. Yesterday, I was really hoping we would see what their plan is for economic growth. I get that they don't want cutting taxes to be part of it, but there's lots of other things you can do. Planning reform, for example, you know, welfare reform, you know, public sector productivity. There are, you know, there are lots and lots of things, you know, the NHS 10 of the economy. What that actually means is that if you improved NHS productivity growth to 2% a year, which is long term rate in the private sector, it actually has an impact on our actual GDP numbers because it's 10% of the economy actually adds 0.1.2% annual GDP growth and that's in the direct control of the government. So that's why I think that's what you really need is a plan.

Is Rachel Reeves actually qualified to be the UK Chancellor?

I think.

I'm her predecessor and I, I think I like to keep politics sort of civil, so, and, and people can grow into their roles.

But, you know, that was a very political answer.

Well, I was.

A baby can grow into an adult.

But I, I just think that in this situation, you know, the, the country is, is stuck with this, these very low levels of growth. And you know, I think her instincts are perfectly sensible on lots of things and I was hoping we would see, I mean, let me give you an example.

Planning, that's something where they've got a big majority in Parliament and if Parliament decides that we want to build a nuclear power station. So in fact she was in Anglesey where we're going to build one of these new small modular reactors, which is great and I actually started the ball rolling on that and I'm really pleased that she's carrying on that and I do think we need more nuclear power. And you know, so she and I are on the same page on that. But the planning process, once Parliament's decided that's going to build a nuclear power station and the treasury said we're going to be good for the Money, it takes eight to 10 years to get planning approval and, and that is just ridiculous.

Pretty much does in Peterborough as well to build anything.

Yeah, I mean, you know, the same with high speed rail. That's why high speed rail. And I'm a, I'm a supporter of high speed rail. I lived in Japan for two years. I, I love, I love, you know, a good train system, but high speed rail in this country costs 10 times more per km than it cost in France. And that is because the planning system is so cumbersome. Now I think we should say very straightforwardly that when parliament has voted to do something, these are our elected representatives. It's a democracy. Planning takes two years maximum. So, yes, we will, of course, consult with local communities and. But we'll do all the different studies, the environmental studies, the transport studies, the, the bats, whatever it is, we'll do it all at. We'll do it all the same time. All the discussions with local residents who are going to be affected, all the discussions about compensation, we'll do that all at the same time. And then it's done and dusted. And by the way, that would be better for local residents because, of course, they suffer from blight. And, you know, what happens in France is right up front, if, you know, if a railway goes through your garden, you're told, this is the deal, this is how much you're going to get. And it's kind of done and dusted and, you know, and it's, it's generous, but you know where you stand. And I think that's the kind of reform which you get support for in the House of Commons, because everyone agrees we need better infrastructure.

Okay, so let's say you were the Chancellor again.

Other than.

Yeah.

What would, what would be your first three things you would do?

Well, I'm going to do a bit of a shameless plug here because I'm actually writing a book and it'll be coming out next summer, and it'll, it's, it's basically how to unlock economic growth. And there are things that, you know, I would do that we've talked about this morning. There are things that I didn't understand fully when I was in office, and it's only writing and researching since leaving office that I have come to understand better.

So let me talk about one of those, which I think is really important. So. And it's really to do with the approach we take to our national debt. So I think, like Rachel Reeves took a view that, you know, the high debt levels we have, it's kind of like a big mortgage on the country, and it's something you have to manage and you have to keep a careful eye on the markets to make sure you're able to keep borrowing the amount of money you need to borrow.

But having stepped down as Chancellor and looked at the whole issue of debt with a bit of perspective, I am worried that our debt is just too high. And I think that you need to have a proper plan that brings down debt. And Rachel Rees talks about fiscal rules, and I had fiscal rules, and these are the things that are designed to persuade markets that we are being responsible with money. But my fiscal rules basically said that debt had to be falling as a percentage of GDP in the fifth year.

That doesn't mean that debt is going to actually go down over the five year period because it could go up, up, up, up, up and then just down a little bit. And you're meeting your fiscal rules and Rachel has changed the fiscal rules, but it's basically the same, it has to be falling in the final year. Yesterday the Office of Budget Responsibility said that as a result of the budget decisions, our debt goes up from 95% of GDP to 96% of GDP. So she's meeting our fiscal rules, but debt is going up and I think we've got to stop this. And I think the way you do it is you just need to have a rule, call it a fiscal rule, call it what you like, but you just need to say that public spending, how much the government spends, will never increase faster than economic growth because the root cause of the problem is that we've been increasing the amount the state spends by faster than we've been generating the wealth to pay for it. And you just have to say that is going to stop and we're going to start overtime. You can't bring down debt immediately. You don't want, you know, have savage cuts in public services, but you need a plan there because otherwise you get in this debt doom loop where the debt's going up and up and up, interest rates stay high and you know, we're spending. By the way, the average person in this country now, the average household, how much do they pay for our debt interest in tax every year? I don't know if anyone knows. It's 3,800quid just on the interest that's not paying for, you know, doctors or schools or the police that is paying for debt interest. We are, you know, the average household paying four grand a year in tax for debt interest. And I think we've just got to ask ourselves if we're German. Germans, of course, much more prudent about debt. It's about 800 or €900 a year. Germans are paying in tax for their debt interest. So that is a lot of money. And that money by the way, is not helping to grow the economy. It's not like going into nuclear power stations. It's not looking after older people on the nhs. A lot of it is going to pay foreigners to thank them for lending us the money in the first place. And that's got to be a bad use of our money.

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I'm neutral about it. I'm not actually automatically against it. I don't really, I'm a bit worried about the, the kind of numbers you're talking about there because, you know, that's a lot of money. But look, I.

I do think that one of the reasons we got a problem with illegal migration is that people find it very easy to work on the black market. And in France, where they do have a system of ID cards, they can't. And that's one of the reasons that one of them, not the only reason, it's one of the reasons why lots of people want to come over here. Even though they're already in a, a safe and relatively wealthy country, they want to come over here. And politics is about trade offs. And so let me tell you the way the trade off works in my mind. I'm married to a migrant, she's Chinese. I have famously mistaken her nationality and called her Japanese in front of the world's media. And that was my, literally my worst ever mistake. And I, I can, I could tell all if you're really interested in as to how that happened.

But anyway, you're still married to her though.

We're still married. And thank goodness she's got a great sense of humor. But, but you know, I think one of the best things about this country is the way that for centuries we've been open to the brightest and best people from all over the world who come to the UK to make their fame and fortune. I mean we've, we've won more Nobel Prizes than anywhere in the world except America. About a third of our Nobel Prize winners were born abroad and came to the UK to do their research. And I am really worried that the social contract that says we are going to be an open economy that welcomes brilliant people from all over the world is going to collapse unless we sort out illegal migration. And the risk you have if you don't sort it out is that people just say, I want no migration full stop. And I think that would be a big step back and you know why? You know, it'd be very bad for our universities, for example, our innovation and so on. So this is one of the things you do to sort out illegal migration in my book. And I would probably make the trade off and say that I was willing to support them if it helped to sort out that issue.

Things like universal basic income or central bank digital currencies. What do you think of those?

Are there big questions? Universal basic income I just don't think works. I mean to give everyone a universal basic income of, let's say.

The median salary in this country is £37,000. I mean we'd be paying 80% tax, it'd be very, very expensive. So I just don't think it works. And I think we need to reward people for working. That's part of my values. Central bank digital currencies, I think we'll probably get there eventually. Yeah, I don't see why we won't.

You don't think that that could be a bit controlling on us?

Well, I think people will want to have, you know, they won't want that to be the only thing that's available. And I'm sure people will want, you know, crypto that's completely independent of central banks. But the biggest issue is if you have central bank currencies from the bank of England, people might say, why do you need banks? Because I can just get bank of England backed money electronically. And actually I do think competition in the banking sector is a good thing. So you've got to think those things through.

Do you think the public sector or the government could learn from the private sector a bit? Do you think maybe some sort of rewards and punishments, some commissions, some targets might help?

I do think that we need to adopt a private sector approach to efficiency and cost saving in the public sector. So I did a really, when you're, you know, when you're Chancellor, you can, you can ask your officials to tell you anything you want and they go away and beaver away and come back.

So I said to them.

In early 2023, I said.

Everyone'S saying our national debt is going up and up and up. We were talking about it just now. In fact, the OBR say carry on as we are and a straight line projection in the 2050s and 60s it'll be maybe 300% of GDP. I mean, the markets would never allow that. But so I was thinking a bit about this and thinking this is, this is obviously worrying. So I said, how much would we have to improve.

Public sector productivity every year in order to stop that debt growing? So how much we'd have to improve the efficiency of the state in order to mean that we didn't have to see our debt grow. And it took them a while and they came back and they said if we increase public sector productivity by 0.7% a year, I mean, pretty small, isn't it, but just 0.7% a year, then debt would stop increasing. And it's actually been going down 0.3% a year since, on average, since 1997. But if you got it up now, the private sector long term rate of increasing productivity is about 2% a year. So basically you wouldn't even have to get to half the private sector level and would stop our debt increasing. Now it is harder in the public sector. You've got these very strong unions who negotiate nationally. So you're talking to the Royal College of Nurses about the salary paid to every nurse across the whole country, whether it's, you know, in the Northeast where the cost of living is a lot lower than the Southeast where it's a lot higher and they're willing to go on strike and they use their muscle. And you've got all the newspapers and the BBC who, you know, who tell you that your cuts are being savage and you're, you know, you're being heartless and cruel and so on. So it's, it's, you know, the private sector is autocratic, not democratic, isn't it? The bosses decide what they want to do and they get on with it. It's much harder in the public sector. So I'm not pretending that this is like an overnight thing. And as I say, I think people who run hospitals have a much tougher job than people in the private sector running similar sized organizations. But I don't think it's too much to say, could we at least be growing our productivity at half the rate of the private sector? I think that is perfectly reasonable and absolutely we should.

What do you think the likelihood is of Nigel Farage and reform getting in? And do you think that's a good thing or not a good thing for the country?

Well, I do have concerns about Nigel Farage, but you can't rule out him winning. We have a first past the post system and at the moment we have five parties. And if you mathematically do the sums if you only need to get the top number of votes, normally if there's like two people running in an election, then you've got to get more than 50% of the votes and you've won like the American presidential election, although they have a slightly complicated system for this. In a five party system, you don't need more than 30% of the votes and you, and you win the seat. And Reform are actually on 30% nationally. So if they're on, you know that that will be an average score. But if they're on more than 30% in enough seats, then they will win those seats. And that's why, you know, lots of people are taking very seriously the prospect of Nigel Farage becoming Prime Minister. My concern about him is two, I think, first of all, you know, we made mistakes on migration, but Reform's view is they want, they call it net zero migration and they are, you know, that, that I think is.

That would be very bad for business if they actually did that in practice because it would mean that, you know, we would be closing the UK off to a lot of talent from all over the world. And secondly, I'm just not sure. They seem to be all over the place when it comes to economic policy. I mean, a few months ago they were wanting to reopen the coal mines in South Wales. They wanted to abolish the two child cap, they wanted to.

Spend 100 billion quid re nationalizing the water companies. Then a month ago they said they're not going to do all that stuff. So I do have some concerns in terms of economic policy, but I mean.

We are a fair way out. I know Nigel quite well and I might be making an assumption here, but I think Nigel's pro business and I do think that Reform would want to welcome people who bring value and productivity into the country. I think that they actually would when it came to it.

It's not their policy at the moment. And.

That does matter. I mean, I, I said to you.

When we met, and I would have said if you'd asked me two years ago, look, I don't support labor, but I'm not, you know, I think Rachel Reeves is, is a sensible person and she's pro business and she'd probably be fine. And I was wrong. And, you know, the truth is that, you know, it hasn't been like that. And I worry because Nigel Farage, you know, he said there was a very good podcast he did with Michelle Hussein and his role model is Donald Trump and Donald Trump's got good things and Bad things. But he said the most important thing about Donald Trump is that he's kept his promises. And that's true. Actually, that has been the biggest thing that has been impressive about Donald Trump. He said he'd reduce border crossings from Mexico and they're down by over 90%. And that compares pretty unfavorably to what's been happening here. So I think if Nigel Farage goes into the election saying he's going to have net zero migration, then he will deliver that because he believes that is absolutely essential that you keep your promises, even if in office he decides it was a slightly over egg policy or whatever. So I do think we need to look carefully about what he actually promises and, and then let's see. But there's a long way to go, by the way. You know, I think conservatives are going to be right back in the race. And I'm not just saying this.

I think you are just saying this.

No, I'm not. I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why. Because we had a hell of a thrashing, worst ever in our history. But the more this parliament goes on, the more the country is worrying about the economy. And then they start thinking, well, who do I actually trust when it comes to the economy? And I think we will.

You know, some people criticize Kemi. I don't think anyone would have done any better, actually. I think she, she did very well yesterday as well. But I think that in the end, people will start giving us a second look.

I do have a lot of sympathy for people in politics because, you know, some people have lost their lives doing it. You know, I know people have massive security details.

Virtually no private Life. They work 80 plus hours a week. And I understand this because obviously I've interviewed many of them, got to know many of them. So what's one thing about either being a politician or being in politics that really the general public don't understand? This may be hard that maybe you'd like us to know.

Okay, I'm. Gonna, I'm gonna say this. We need good people to go into politics and we need business people to go into politics. Business people know how to run things. And I can tell you there's no very little overlap between being an MP and being a businessperson. Because being an MP or basically you have to be good at being a self publicist. And business people aren't really like that. They don't really tend to have large egos. They're trying to get their company to work and sell products. But being a government minister has a lot of overlap with being a business person, because there you're trying to make something happen. And my company was a small company, but the skills I learned there were invaluable when I was responsible for the nhs, which is the biggest organization in the world. So what I say to young people, if I, you know, I do a lot of talks at school, schools, I say, you know, public service is a massive privilege. And, look, I'm really proud of setting up my business. They were some of the happiest days of my life. But I'll tell you a stat that you don't know about me at all. But when I was Health Secretary, you remember, I was saying I was trying to get the safety and the quality of care better, and I put all my effort into that. And by the time I finished, the number of baby deaths in the NHS had fallen by about 700 a year, which is about 2 fewer baby deaths a day. And I'll be proud of that till the day I die. And, you know, and I. I would challenge anyone to say, what can you do in. In any other field that would make you as proud of that? And so it is a brilliant thing to go into public service and you get a lot of flack, but. But don't be put off, because actually it's. It's incredibly rewarding and we really need great people to do it.

Jeremy, thank you very much.

That.