And were going to be joined the first part by lord barwell who used to be chief of staff to the previous Prime Minister theresa may. Hello gavin. Hi, hi. Seeing us were talking about the are all the time now. R 0k, nevermind. The reason we brought you in gavin, is to get a bit of insight into how difficult it is making Big Decisions like, how do you perhaps tweak the social distancing rules and how do you communicate it to the public . Because thats the sort of decisions you had to make when you at number too. First of all news casters have been coming up with potential names for the next phase. The un lockdown. The unfurling, lift off my finger on, corned tween. Thats in between. Corned tween. I was think it rollback some people have been talking about rollback or unwind, ive also had the unwind stops but is not going to be a giant flinging open of the doors, is a . We expected all week that at some point, now we know it can be seven oclock on sunday. We can hearfrom the Prime Minister at the gradual route out of this. He said yesterday some of the restrictions might be unwound as early as monday for the government confirmed last night the stay at home message that is been so successful at keeping people home is going to be dispatched. But todays been a bit tricky for the government with those things all sort of coming out there, as in a . And we saw dominic raab at the downing street brief doing that briefing revealing his version of the slogan and its definitely nowhere as near as concise as corned tween have a listen. We had updated evidence from sage. There is further evidence coming through and we obviously have to take those decisions at the right moment in time based on that evidence. Whatevers been reported in the newspapers is not a reliable guide to either the evidence that were getting or the policy decisions that will be taken. Thats why its very important that the Prime Minister on sunday will set out a road map. I think it safe to say that only changes in the short term will be modest, small, incremental and very carefully monitored. As of now there is no changes. Modest, small, incremental and carefully monitored. Kathy is in a . Really tricky because the government is facing lots of demand from its critics saying with got to tell us what the plan is. Youve got to give us an exit strategy. Now theyre tiptoeing towards one but at the same time a huge risk not risk of mixing the message. Very difficult. Gavin, how hard is this balancing act and the sales job in this communique job . I think this is harder than anything i ever had to deal with for a number of reasons. Itis . Yes. This is a much more difficult issue. I have every sympathy in the people in number ten. First thing, there isnt a scientific consensus. This is a new virus. So the scientists arent all agreed. When you say im falling sick for eight scientific advice, whose advice . Second issue we know that this crisis is going to lead to people dying in three different ways. Some people from the virus, some people because they didnt seek medical attention during this crisis that can affect them go forward. And some people because of the increased deprivation from economic consequences. The people that listen to this are getting one figure every night and the other two figures we cant see at the moment. How do you strike that balance . The other thing laura was talking about the potential communications challenge. They want some people to resume some kind of normal life but they dont want us all doing it. How do you, get that message across to the public first of i think there will be really keen to keep the whole uk moving together. So theyve got to get the buy in and of all governments to whatever strategy. Huge challenges facing them. Actually, interesting you take the lead not mention the four nation approach. Nicola sturgeon had some pretty strong words for the Prime Minister. Her part two is conference particular around the idea of due scrap the whole state home on chart which is kind of been out in the ether a bit. The other possible changes that i reported in the media encouraging people back to work now are opening beer gardens or encouraging more use of public transport would not in myjudgement be safe for us to make yet. And i particularly, strongly believe that for us to draw clear, well understood stay at home message drop right now could be a potentially catastrophic mistake. 0k gavin what do you do . Whats the new slogan that goes on the front of the podium at number 10 downing street . What do you print off at their Prime Ministers office . I think they had this problem going into the crisis. Initially they tried nuance, they tried to say to people steer clear. It wasnt until they arrived at that simple slogan take it. Significant impact on peoples behavior. I hear what nicola is saying but you cant just stick with the same. If you want economy to resume, it feels to me they are going to look at different kind of work environments and have different guidance, with different kinds of working environments for the if you want things like construction to resume one of the reason construction stopped is because people working on Building Sites were getting flack from people going past saying hang on, the government telling people to stay home. What you do working . I dont think we should can stick with the same messaging but its a real challenge in communication. It so tricky and i want to say it may sound political messaging and why we do not . The point is this is the stuff that makes a difference to controlling the disease. Government knows that, people know that when they introduced a home the level of compliance work very, very high. And it made a real difference to the spread of the disease. From your point of view from when the government change the messaging around how important will be in the next phase for them to get it right . Massively important because until they get it right, until it began the level of transmission of virus was really up. We can talk more about the r number later but it was, the virus was transmitting very freely within the community and the epidemic was growing. But as soon as the lockdown measures happened and social distancing came in and a really major way, we saw the level of transmissions coming down. Although deaths went up because there was a lag, thats what has the big impact. Its cutting the virus to spread between people. And when youre looking for a more nuanced message its difficult. If you look at the front page of the newspapers today the mail lockdown, freedom beckons. The messaging now when you have headlines like that and then you have dominic raab saying modest, small and incremental. Its really difficult. Because to get the messaging right but we also need to not allow the economy to completely tank. So this famous r number is the number of people on average that any i person gives the virus too. If its below one that means eventually the virus gets smaller and disappears. If its above one it increases very, very quickly, exponentially as the experts say. There is a lotta focus from the government on this art number. Gavin, do you think its wise that they are pinning so much on this one concept . If i understood the press conference probably today theyre trying to look at him and on the prevalence. So how many people actually have it in the population . Exactly. I think that is the critical thing. The judgement they have made is that they dont want to go back into a second lockdown. So they cannot allow a situation to get in play where we go back to having sustained growth in the number of cases. That means they are walking a tightrope. They said in the press Conference Today that this number is some where between 1. 5 and. 9 i think it was. It doesnt give you a huge amount of headroom. I think critical to this panel on sunday is, what are the new things they can introduce, the sort of idea of going back to massive testing going on and then isolating people who test positive and tracing their contacts quickly. This work so well in germany. Potentially quarantine the people coming into the country, potentially the use of mask. And they used introduced new things there that can bear some of the weight and some of the existing restrictions we are taking. That seems to me, the only way you can engage in some way to bring new things in. Relatively little headroom in terms of where that are r number is at the moment. Ive been her to call the r budget. How much have you got to spend before it gets bad again. Tricky because its different in different parts of the country. And its different and different settings to use that technical term. So what was interesting today is the government, the statistician and he i think actually surprised a lot of people by agreeing with another two another scientist i was talking earlier in the day and suggesting that that critical our rate might actually be going up. Ajiggly and care homes. Have a listen to what he had to say. The r is probably gone up from just and that is proven by the epidemic in care homes. And i would not demurrer from that. That gives us a real challenge to reduce the epidemic in care homes and its one that i think over the next few weeks from what i see happening, i think will happen. And an e mailfrom a gp that i want to share. Weve been talking about this so much on this broadcast and gavin i want to ask you this in a 2nd. He said, elderly people have been denied escalation into intensive care. A considerable number have been sent back to care home with covid i9 still active to die there. Care homes are where the most susceptible in the community reside. This is where we meant to be shielding people in their 805 and 905 and this is where weve been sending covid cases. That gp did not want to be named for understandable reasons. He wants to keep that as an account. But gavin, success of governments have promised solutions for social care including the government you were a part of. Do you think that when we look back at all of this and i think they have people say we can see it now, one of the huge problems here is that people have just not given care homes and the people who live them anything like the level of political priority that they should have. Yes. First of all, that message you read out from gp is very concerning im sure it would be very concerning for the secretary of health. The policy is that people shouldnt be placed back in care homes if they are infected. Yes, i completely agree. I think it has been a failure of our politics that weve not been able to reach across Party Consensus on how to properly resource and reform social care. One of the things that occupies me looking at this from a bit of a distance now. I think there is going to be a very strong desire among politicians and among the public but im sure as we rebuild from this crisis weve rebuilt better. And one of the things thats got to be part of that agenda is that getting carried socially resource. All of the parties will engage in that and try and come up with a common plant that we can deliver. Not having done that when you were in downing street must be a huge regret for you. Yes. Obviously, teresa before i took up the chief of staffjob, teresa sent a piece of that manifesto in 2017. Which went well. She radical idea and she didnt have time to sell and the election. I think with corbibn in the party was impossible to form any kind of consensus. I think this crisis in the fact that labour, you dont have corbett now, they are made well be the opportunity out the back of this to reach a consensus about a long time reform. One of the things that makes these kinds of issues that are long term so difficult for our parley politics normally deal with is that the politics if you like, come years down the line. Party. They much better in terms of how we collect tackle Climate Change if you can get the parties aligned on a common way forward. Before we let you go, how often did you and teresa may discuss the possibility of a pandemic heading for an . I cant recall that being something that was discussed. My memory of it is when i was a new backbench mp we sat on the science and Technology Select committee and we certainly on the register then because it was going to be looked at as a committee. Its certainly something the government was planning for. More of a risk from a flu pandemic. Pleasure talking to you. Very interesting number station. Lets have another fascinating conversation with stephanie flanders. Senior executive editor at bloomberg but we all know her from being on tv every night from the last financial crisis. Stephanie, there was some really hair raising start from the bank of a building today for the house sleep or should i be tonight thinking about it . They lay out what they think is a sort of possible or even likely scenario for the economy. Which does involve falling off a cliff in the last few months. And how bad is the fall and how big is the cliff . So, its a fall of the third in these three months the last few months and then having quite a good recovery in the second half because that fall is so big because that fall is taking a third of our National Output and not producing it. You are still looking at the end of the year at a 12 drop in the size of our economy. Just to put that in perspective weve not seen anything like that in hundreds of years. I think back to 1703 was the data and its more than twice what we had in the Global Financial crisis. But i would say they dont call it a forecast. The economists are always pretty bad or forecasting the economy but there recognising its not down to the economy. Its down to how the government decides to phase the lockdown and how do we respond to a . Too if you like going out and spending which of course is a real question. I think the bank has based it on this being a gradual lifting which which is what we expect will stop in the real world those numbers are so huge a third of the economy had disappeared for a while. What kind of thing will that mean to all of us in the next few years in the real world . A lot will depend on how quickly we come back. I think when we came into this and we look to the example of china and you remember people talk about the different shapes, different letters for the recovery is aching to be a v shape a you are a w r and l. We were thinking it would be a v so going down far and coming up quickly. It seemed like it wasnt like the Global Financial crisis. It wasnt something that was building up over time that seemed like a big debt problem that needed to be worked through in the banking system. This was something that was a natural catastrophe that hit us. If we did the right thing, if governments did the right thing to kind of protect businesses and protect workers during this period where we arent allowed to do any work and they were getting anybody demanding the services, then you could hopefully be investing in that rapid recovery. So it would be the steepest recession ever but also the quickest recovery. I hope thats still going to be true. But even on what they call illustrative scenario from the bank of england we are not back to where we were for at least another couple of years without that convulse and permanent damage. Involve especially young people if they are out of the Labour Market right at the beginning of their career. That could be a permanent hit to their income. The example i heard today was that it could be a bathtub shape. Like a you with a really flat bottom thats quite long. I think you have to be quite gloomy about the lockdown for that to be the case right . Because quite a lot of things should be able to come back. The bits of the economy that we think can operate in a reasonably socially distance way should be quite significant chunk. I think we have to worry about is things like airlines, hospitality, parts of the retail sector. Where you think how long is it going to take for them to come back . Will they come back at all . Now people have realised maybe they dont need to go out to the restaurant is much as they used to and things like that. Thats the questions dont know. Is this going to change our behaviour for a long time or is itjust about the controls that the government has had in terms of the lockdown . Weve been speaking to people, Sarah Clayton was a Business Owner in particular horrified this week for one of those bounce back loans the government has announced. Funds from my bounce back loan which is the governments latest initiative to have some businesses, i cant see how much of a life like this scheme is for a Small Business. I cant see how much of a life like i previously had been rejected c bills. Despite being a Small Business and trading and doing well so im really glad that the government have done something to help businesses like mine get through. The process was really quick i applied on monday, i actually had the funds yesterday morning. What those funds are going to do is basically enable me to float the next six months. Although we are very lucky that weve not really got lots of debt to pay. What that money is going to be used for is to cushion the visits through the tough Economic Times thats coming our way over the next six months. And c bills if you havent be paying close attention is the coronavirus loan scheme. A huge time for the government, for how long can this little fling that level of support go on . I bet we will be talking about more next week. Youve got so much experience following the economy, for how long is it reasonable for the government to keep on giving this level of Financial Support . There is going to come a point where people with the furlough scheme in particular cant go on forever. I think at the moment there is a surprising degree, if you go back lara, you remember the austerity debates, there isnt actually a big debate about this. Even economists from the right and left want governments to spend, spend, spend. Including germany which is never want to spend. Because they know its an investment in the recovery. Otherwise, there is nothing to stop this economy falling off. Thank you, steph. So interesting. As promised we are now going to speak to rock royalty brian may. Hello brian. Not feeling very royal at the moment but it is i. Seems to be amusing everybody. How did that happen . I ripped it in the garden somehow. Dont how it happened. Tell us about we are the champions. Which is actually you are the champions. It started off as kind ofa bit of fun, i suppose. Ive been doing micro concerts i play bit of guitar and talk and sometimes its like a tutorial, sometimes its i c