Begins, cheltenham roar, is the festival begins, kicking off four days of racing. Begins, kicking off four days of racing, culminating in the gold cup on friday on friday. Good morning. A fairly on friday. Good morning. A fairly cloudy day for most of us today. Patchy light rain in the north. Heavy rain in the south. The temperature continues to climb in the next few days. Details later in the programme. Good morning. Its tuesday, 12th march. A long awaited report into Veterinary Services will be published this morning, after concerns pet owners are facing expensive bills when paying for treatments. The Competition And Markets Authority launched the review last year, and has previously said that fees were rising faster than other goods and services during the cost of living crisis. Nina has the details. Good morning. Are you paying too much to care for your furry friend . Why have vet costs been rising faster than general inflation . Are you getting a fair deal when it comes to costing
Economy and help families with permanent tax breaks. Labour will argue that any reductions will still leave people worse off because of the freezing of Tax Thresholds. Ben king reports. The background to todays budget has been gloomy, with the economy in recession. But it looks like the chancellor will still find room to cut taxes. The conservatives are trailing labour in the polls, and looking Forjeremy Hunt to give them some cheer in places like this, winchester, a seat the Lib Dems Hope to win. So what do people here think about tax cuts . I think it would be a good idea because it gives people more money to spend on what they want to buy. Realistically, people arent going to save that much money from a tax cut, whereas more money in Public Services means Better Health care services. Itsjust much more important. I would prefer not to have a tax cut, but to see more money invested in the community. If the Public Services were properly organised, theres more than enough money to do it
those two cases were on the 30th and sist those two cases were on the 30th and 31st of january and there would almost certainly be more. the central point according to these minutes is that government had a plan to deal with illness. yes. you didn t in fact, plan to deal with illness. 133 you didn t in fact, within the department of health and social care, commission until the 10th of february the plan, the battle plan as you describe in your statement, or the action plan as it was published on the 3rd of march. and therefore, what plan was it that you were referring to cabinet colleagues too, to deal with the illness? firstly, we had the pandemic flu strategy set out in 2011, but by this point we had a whole series of different plans for expanding different plans for expanding different areas. so we had a plan for the expansion of testing within the hd. that plan didn t go fast enough and i had to take serious action to change that in the middle of march. we had a plan for
appropriately, from the artificial intelligence summit at bletchley park. the other big story this week, though, has been the quite eye popping testimony at the public inquiry into how the government handled various phases of the covid epidemic. and, i mean, it has massively, massively taken me back to those scary, uncertain days in early spring 2020. and i spent a lot of those days sat in this very studio and the person sat across from me and being very reassuring at all times was laura k, who s back in the studio. not in the studio. no, i m not. but i m logistically distanced today, not socially distanced. and i m very pleased to hear that i was reassuring back in those early days of march 2020. you were one of the only people i saw! well, i m pleased. well, it was very nice. we were a tiny little band of people, carrying on, trying to do ourjobs as everybody wondered what on earth was going on. and it s been a very strange experience watching this, hasn t it? because i was
communications plan for coronavirus, thatis communications plan for coronavirus, that is what that reference was recording hancock and co. and also, as you know there is an e mail from, on 25th february, i was saying where are all of these red teams, where is this testing and what not that hancock promised us existed, where are the documents and we at number ten were starting to get a feel for the absence of things and a feel for the absence of things and a feel for the fact that the first wave of all the fact that the first wave of all the communications plans. you say the communications plans. you say the system the communications plans. you say the system didn t the communications plans. you say the system didn t push the communications plans. you say the system didn t push him - the communications plans. you say the system didn t push him to - the communications plans. you say| the system didn t push him to come back, didn t regard it as crisis, but, you were part o