A full bulletin of news at the top of the hour. Now on bbc news, newscast. Chris, we have got a Cabinet Minister to keep us company this episode. Yes. Mel stride, work and pensions secretary, hello. Good evening, adam. I am impressed you have got a crib sheet there already, started taking notes already. I have only written about three things down i promise it will be full by the end. Then we will mark your homework we will mark your homework like a Human Version of the obr i have got to ask you the big question that has become the classic interview question this week, after the Prime Minister� s interview with grazia, do you make your own bed . No, but i do load the dishwasher. 0k. I do walk the dog. And mrs may would approve, i do take the bins out. Because that is a mansjob. So i do that as well. Chris, i want to know what you thought about that, seeing the Prime Minister talk about an unmade bed. After you had been talking to the nation about your unmade bed in that premier inn the other day. I should explain to newscasters and to mel, who may not have caught that particular newscast, that about a fortnight ago, i was in wellingborough, i was covering the by election in wellingborough, i had woken up at about five in the morning to write a piece for the today programme and all the rest of it, and we were doing a newscast that was live on the iplayer at seven o� clock in the morning. And i am in a budget hotel, and i got out of bed and went to the little desk and was doing my thing and then fired up the call to newscast. And all we ended up talking about, in amongst the sprinkling of psephology, was that my bed wasn� t made i mean, ijust never make my bed in the same way that i don� t wash the tyres on a car. What� s the point . I� ve got to get back in it at night the reason those things strike a chord because everyone does them. Most things that a Prime Minister does, most people don� t do. I get why it strikes a chord as a grazia line of questioning. Just not you. I am just in a different place to the Prime Minister on that one, ijust don� t bother making a bed. Anyway, we are all in the right place to make an episode of newscast which i promise will be more serious from now on hello, it is adam in the studio. And it is chris in the studio. And we have got mel stride, who is the work and pensions secretary. Hello. Hello, adam. Is it true that they used to say, when the government was in a bit of a sticky wicket, Unshell The Mel . Because they would send you out. They used to say, dont hide the stride i� ve never heard that one and this followed on from uncork the gauke. David gauke. So we both had the same position, at different times, obviously, at the treasury, financial secretary to the treasury, and when there were things to damp down, you know, the dead bat to be applied, Unshell The Mel would be the call. They will be no dead batting here today, i can assure you that was a thing that you would have to do, just actually not make any waves, just be quite defensive, just. There would inevitably be somebody, you are very old hands, there would be some things that would crop up and you had to go out and try and douse it down and sometimes they would send me to do that. I wore it as a badge of honour, i would say. Right, onto business. Chris, everyone has had a chance to sleep on the budget now. Another bed reference, i can� t help myself what are your thoughts . So there are a couple of things, i think, today. There has been a bit of a thing today, hasn� t there, but the conservatives, the chancellor sort of aerating this aspiration, not a promise, a sort of ambition to scrap National Insurance contributions. We have seen these cuts, two rounds of 2p cuts, and then he sort to entertained the idea that maybe you could get rid of them. But without saying it is our policy to get rid of them. Ora pledge ora plan. Indeed. And then you have labour trying to make an argument that says this is a giant unfunded sort of tax cut promise except it isn� t quite a promise. So what i think you have got is the conservatives seeking to point to a Dividing Line of aspiration, if you like. It� s not really a Dividing Line because it� s not a policy but it gets you some way, i suppose, to a sense of where the conservatives would like to go, with labour arguing that this is sort of irresponsible. And i notice that this afternoon in a social media thing, they did that whole facial merging thing, where they got the Prime Minister and liz truss and half the face was rishi sunak and half the face was liz truss, to try and make an argument about hauling him into the legacy of the Truss Administration which, from their perspective, they think they can get some mileage out of. Mel, loads of things we can ask you. What is the right word to describe the long term goal when it comes to National Insurance . Is it a pledge, an aspiration . I think it is a Direction Of Travel, it is an aspiration, it is a declaration of intent, but it is not a hard, firm pledge. Of course, the Labour Party Want to transmogrify it into that then that allows them to say that we are being fiscally irresponsible, it is going to cost £46 billion, although in typical sort of labour fashion, the 46, some of the backbenchers have started adding a few billion, it became 48, but that is what labour is like, they like to add a little bit along the way. But is it anything if it is not a promise . I think aspirations, Direction Of Travel is something that is legitimate. And in the absence of that, you might be saying to me where is the vision . Rishi sunak never has any vision, he is all about today and managing his way through. There you are, you have got a bit of vision. We want to see a lower tax society and we have got two down payments on it now these National Insurance cuts. 27 Million People will be £900 a year to off better off because of the National Insurance cuts to their employees, or if they are self employed, they will be £650 better off than this year. I suppose then the next question on the aspiration around the abolition of National Insurance is that, if you can get to that point, and i know from speaking to people in government, people are acknowledging, looking if would only be possible, if they concluded it was responsible at the time it could take quite a long time to get there, etc, etc, but if you managed to get there, that comes with a consequence, a trade off, doesn� t it, in terms of that Revenue Stream of tax not being there and therefore stuff that you cannot spend money on that you are currently spending money on, and what that might be. So you have got the various moving macroeconomic parts, you have got the spending and the taxing, you have got the growth. And between those different things, you have got to make sure you hit your fiscal targets and that will ever be the case. That will be arguments about whether it fiscal targets might change but apart from that, you are working within those parameters so you are right, they are trade offs. To put it more bluntly, if you aspire to cut a tax that currently generates £40 billion plus, where do you aspire to spend 40 billion compared to what you are spending now . That is a horror show of a question there is no way in todays climate any chancellor will start saying, well, we are suddenly going to. But you� ve got to have it on one side of the ledger and the other. But an aspiration is for something in the future, and as you have recognised, these things can take quite a long period of time. So nobody is going to have this in one bound jack was free, we are suddenly going to do this thing overnight, this will be an endeavour that will take time and it will have to be done in a fiscally responsible manner, which means every fiscal event, we will have to stick to those fiscal rules. And move forward in that direction but of course it will take a lot of time, it will certainly not happen overnight. There are plenty of people right now who will say, plenty of newscasters might say that the size of the state is too big, the state should be doing less. Are there things that would run into the tens of billions that you can think of right now that perhaps the government shouldn� t be doing . In other words, that would help work out that ledger that if you are not going to have a0 billion plus of tax revenue from National Insurance, then you cannot spend it on x. It is very kind of you to invite me to start giving you a Shopping List of tens of billions of different changes that might free up that kind of money chris, you are a kind and decent man chancellor mel stride 2028 im afraid the dead bat hasjust come out thumped down on the ground no, i mean, look, these things take a lot of time. Just to take National Insurance down 1 is about 5 billion or thereabouts, so you would have to do it in stages and you would have to find the money, hopefully through growing the economy. Because look, why have we dropped National Insurance . It is a tax onjobs. One of the things that is holding the economy back is a tight Labour Market. Now, the 0br says that those two tax cuts, this fiscal event and the last, will free up about 200,000 full time equivalent additional people in the Labour Market by the end of the forecast period. That is about 20 of the vacancies in the economy at the moment, so that will have a huge Supply Side Boost to the economy and that is why you go for those kind of taxes. If we can keep getting growth going, and we are going to outgrow, according to the 0br, you know, france and germany and italy and japan and so on Going Forward over the next five years. Not necessarily on a per person basis. In terms of gdp growth, which is relevant to the question chris is asking about where you find the money, if we can continue to do that, then we can start to find that money to do that. And that will be a priority, getting taxes down and National Insurance, a very sensible tax to reduce. Would you like the abolition of National Insurance to be in the conservative manifesto . I am not going to speculate on the tory party manifesto. But i would be very surprised if there was not a serious aspiration to continue on this path of reducing taxes beyond the next general election, but it is not for me to start speculating on that. That was almost like a dead bat yes. That was half a dead bat i don� t know enough about cricket at this point you must know a completely dead bat. It was twitching, chris. There was a smidgen of an answer in there. Ok, on wednesday� s episode of newscast the podcast, we had a question from newscaster alan asking about what was in this for pensioners and we talked about it and we kicked around the numbers looking at the red book and what the 0br was saying. Alan got back in touch today to say, your guests were dead right of course, pensioners will lose out. As a way of proving the case, my own circumstances are that my wife and i live on my occupational pension and my state pension. As each year passes, alan says, i am paying increasingly large amounts of standard rate income tax therefore i am losing 20 of a sizeable chunk of my pension in income. Alternatively, my 25 year old single son, who is slightly above uk mean average salary it� s a long e mail, alan will benefit by around £1,100 next tax year. It looks like the tories will lose their quota of silver voters at the next election. I have voted tory all my life, says alan, and he signs off, not any more. 0k, well, my message to alan is this. That pensioners are absolutely at the heart of the concerns of this government and have been notjust in this budget, but across a broader period of time. So we have stuck to the triple lock. We introduced it, we have stuck by it, many people like chris and others and yourself have said, is that fiscally sustainable etc and we have said we stand by our pensioners, 0k . Pensions went up by 10. 1 to cover this year, a further 8. 5 , that is way above the level of inflation for next year. Pension credit, which is there for the less well off pensioners, my department has done a huge amount to expand the number of pensioners that are qualifying, getting into that extra support. Things like the local Housing Allowance that we put up this is for private renters to give them extra help with those costs, it is worth £800 to 1. 6 Million People. That kicks in in april, many of those will be pensioners. Cost of living payments were targetted specifically amongst others at pensioners and look, the proof point is this, if you went back to the last Labour Government we would have a legitimate conversation about deep pensioner poverty. It was an area in which poverty was concentrated, was amongst the elderly. That was not right and we have put that right. There are 200,000 fewer people now in absolute poverty after Housing Costs since 2010. So i think our record on pensioners is really strong and we recognise it is difficult for them to change their economic circumstances through going out to work etc, and therefore we have a duty to really look after them and i believe that we have and we will continue to do so and very quickly, David Cameron got lots of plaudits for his Social Media Video where he listed all his achievements while walking very purposefully down the Foreign Office stairs across the street. Ijust wondered, has he been copying you . Because i went on your social media feed and every video is you walking somewhere the town centre, the office, taking the dog. People say i am the new grant shapps, you see anyway, who knows . In the self promotion stakes. Who knows . I am sure david is quite capable of doing his own thing. It was well put together, i thought it was very good. Talking about Cabinet Ministers� contributions to social media, should someone remain in the cabinet if they have contributed to social media and cost the taxpayer £15,000 in damages . I refer to your colleague michelle donelan. You are referring to a letter that michelle sent to somebody. Mm. Making accusations which turned out not to be the case. My understanding is the department has sorted that out as quickly as possible and that is why it is 15,000 and not a much larger sum, without any admission associated with it. But i do think there is a fundamental point here. Because if we were, as a sort of natural extension of your question, chris, to say well, actually what we should do Isjust Leave Ministers to pay those things themselves, which is what i gather keir starmer is calling for, i think it would be a frightening place for most ministers and departments because they would be worried about what they said to almost anybody. Shouldn� t they be worried about what they say . Well, they should be but not to the extent that they will be worried about getting into those situations. Look, she was acting as a minister on the advice of Civil Servants and i dont think it is unreasonable that in that capacity she should have that kind of support. There is that element to it which is kind of who pays the bill . There is also the Judgment Element of it, isn� t there, which is should a Cabinet Minister be tweeting this sort of stuff out . I dont know what advice michelle received at that time. I can only assume she would have had discussions within the department and acting as a minister you would have expected her to have had that, whether she had legal advice, whether she had policy advice, whether she had just advice from a private office, i have no idea. But i think the principle of a Minister Functioning as a minister and having support in that way is not unusual. Isn� t there a deeper failing then within the department if she has had advice that turns out to be dud given what has happened now . This isn� tjust a minister a minister deciding to tap stuff out on her phone on the way home and all the rest of it. It is something that has a depth to it where there has been a failure. We are speculating so neither of us know, i certainly dont know exactly what happened and the actions that she did, but i think as a principal if you are functioning as a minister in a department it is not unreasonable you should have the kind of support she has ended up having. My understanding is they acted very quickly, shut it down in order to save the taxpayer further expense. Mel stride, thank you very much for not hiding from us. Thank you so much for having me. Now, let� s pick up on something we were mentioning earlier which is rishi sunak� s interview with Grazia Magazine and a video i have become obsessed with. I think i have watched more any other political video in years. There isjust so much in it. But i am an amateur when it comes to these things and we are joined by some professionals. Here in the studio isjo elison who is the editor of the ft magazine hcsi. Which i call how to spend it. Fair enough. Hcsi. And you used to work at vogue as well, didn� t you . I was, yeah. And anotherjo, jo tanner, a Political Communications strategist who has worked with lots of people, including borisjohnson hello again