this is bbc news, the headlines. rishi sunak says he'll bring back mandatory national service for 18 year olds if the conservatives win the general election. meanwhile, labour's been answering questions on its plan for the economy. it promises not to increase income tax if it wins on polling day. the united nations says almost 700 people are feared dead following a landslide in papua new guinea. at least 150 houses were buried on friday evening while people are sleeping. sirens heard across tel aviv as hamas says it's launched a large missile attack on the city — the first in months. some missiles are said to have been intercepted. no direct hits or injuries have been reported.

12 people have been injured after a flight from doha to ireland have been —— hit turbulence. the flight has landed safely. now it's time for today's sunday episode of newscast. hello, you two. hello. can i introduce you to the new star of newscast electioncast? yourself. no! i'm famously modest, laura. jenny leck. 0h! the realjenny leck. i heard about this. yeah, she's from manchester and her name is actuallyjenny leckie, but her friends call herjenny leck, which means she's perfect as our part—time general election correspondent. so i heard jenny leck the other day on newscast, and i thought, she sounds like a marvellous person. however, i also have quite a strong feeling that anyone calling the general election genny lex should be not allowed to do so. you were wondering in a new modern bbc, what kind of punishment is allowed? yes, exactly. oh, really?

because i heard i heard the bosses are thinking of calling the election night programme, jenny leck: nation decides election night programme. that's really hilarious. 0k. anyway, jenny leck is going... "not with with my name on it, they won't!" that's a discussion for another day. but she's going global now because she was on greg james�* radio one breakfast show the other day as well. and this is how it sounded. now, there's been a lot of chat about what we're going to call this general election, and... so, genny lex 2024. feels like genny lex is sort of taking flight a bit. we had plattyjubes, we had cozzie livs, i and now we have genny leck. yeah, now, the latest episode of newscast have got involved and found someone called... who have we got on the line now? 0h, hiya. my name'sjenny, and my surname is leckie, and people do call me for short, jenny leck. jenny leck is on newscast. so good to meet you! jenny leck there on the latest edition of newscast, which you can listen to on

bbc sounds. now, are we making poor jennifer leckie... is that her name? yeah. are we making jennifer leckie be interested in politics when really she's a person going about her business and has no intention, quite understandably, of paying attention to us wittering on. what is hilarious is when i met her on newscast the other day there, i said, "where are you on the scale of interest in politics from one to ten, where one is not interested at all? ten is like laura kuenssberg, chris mason level." and she said, "oh, i'm a one." but then in the course of the conversation, she went from one to zero. i was like, ok, this is going slightly in the wrong direction, but never mind. oh, i love that. but you've got to be so honest. well, it's a very valid point, though, and political parties always talk about this. they know that really it's only in the sort of closing moments of a campaign that most normal people, many people really tune in, in the sort of closing moments. so this is not a phoney war, but this is definitely the campaign warm up before it gets really, really massive. back to your theory about actually

you don't need a lot of vavoom in the first two weeks necessarily. necessarily... yes, it's important. i suppose, the thing is, if you mess it up at the start, it's not the end of the world. i also remember results when i look back, but also i remember john prescott punching the guy who punched... yes! i remember the events at the soap box forjohn major. duffy—gate. 0h, duffy—gate. but what's interesting about the punch is i was reminded yesterday, that was actually the day labour launched their manifesto. does anyone remember the 2001 labour manifesto? i mean, does anyone remember any manifesto is another question. but everyone remembers the punch, not tony blair's manifesto. the punch. i was talking about it this morning, actually, with some people who were on our show about their favourite campaigns. and alanjohnson remembered a non—favourite moment where they were launching the labour 2010 election campaign. and as gordon brown was doing so, there was literally a car crash in the venue just in front of him. no—one was hurt. no—one was hurt, and plenty of other hilarious anecdotes on today's episode of newscast.

it's paddy in the studio. laura in the studio. and adam in the studio. and i'vejust realised i'm giving up my weekend to do some public service. this is myjob, but i'll tell you what, laura scooped again. so we start with the reason why we're all tuning in, which is you've got labour to make an announcement on tax. so rachel reeves, shadow chancellor, has always wanted to keep her cards very, very close to her chest. apart from saying, "i'll be careful with your money, i'll be careful with your money, and by the way, i'll be careful with your money." there's been a question about what they would do about tax, because the tories have long said they won't really be careful with your money. "they're just not telling you they're secretly planning to put up taxes!" but this morning on the record, she ruled out increasing income tax. and that is quite a big and important moment in this campaign. well, let's start by listening. we won't increase income tax or national insurance. - in fact, we oppose the increases to national insurance _ when rishi sunak put those forward as chancellor. - so that is a very expensive commitment. in other words, that's a huge amount

of money that she would not have to play with if she's lucky enough to become the chancellor in six weeks' time. but isn't this what labour were saying anyway? i thought they said they weren't going to put taxes up. they've said generically that they don't want to increase taxes on working people. that is absolutely not the same as saying, "i am not going to do these things." very, very different in the context of a campaign. yeah, and also, given that there's been two cuts in national insurance by this conservative government, the fact that she says she's not going to put up national insurance presumably means there's a big gap in what she's capable of spending as well. that's right. and remember, the context to whoever wins is that the public kipper, the public books is pretty disastrous, right? there is a huge amount of debt. massive, massive, massive. there have already been years of cuts to a lot of different government departments. but both the tories and labour say they want to get debt down under quite tough rules. if you do that, you're going to have to either raise taxes or cut services. and she's saying today,

"i'm not going to raise two of those big taxes." they are going to raise some taxes like windfall taxes and close loopholes on non—doms, which we've all heard many, many times. but in terms of the big cake, those are little crumbs, right? so how does it work, to both of you, because i don't do a tv show. does she come in...? you have done plenty in your time time, including quizzes. but does she... there's a reason. but does she come in thinking, today when pushed by kuenssberg, i'm going to say, "i will not... today when pushed by kuenssberg, read my lips. today when pushed by kuenssberg, no new taxes." today when pushed by kuenssberg, does she know when she's coming in or has she surprised herself? i mean, this has been floating around for a couple of days now. and i mean, i didn't tune into a lot of election coverage on saturday because i was dashing around, having fun. but one of the things i noted was increasing questions about labour's fiscal policy. and, "oh, they're saying they don't want to raise taxes, but they're not actually ruling it out." what was it? what was the original formulation?

"we've got no plans to increase taxes." or, "what we've pledged so far doesn't require us to increase any new taxes," which is not the same as saying in future they wouldn't raise taxes. and that was starting to get quite loud, those questions about that. i think that's right. but rachel reeves is a very careful and deliberate politician, and i'm fairly sure that she will have decided this morning or or even long before this morning, perhaps in week one of the campaign, that might be when they would say, "we're not going to put up income tax and we're not going to put up national insurance." so i don't think it was an accident at all. i didn't know she was going to do it. i knew obviously it was a very... i mean, it was a no—brainer question to ask because she wants to be the chancellor. but i didn't know that she was going to say that this morning. newscasters like us to go behind the process. so you didn't know she's going to say? as adam is hinting, she knew she had to clear something up. but torsten bell's been on newscast with us before. yes, resolution foundation, former treasury board. former labour board, big economic brain counting person. very good at counting.

that's good on the aston on tv. it's good, isn't it? saying that borrowing you can borrow for capital investment and tell the world that's what you're doing and that doesn't spook people in the way that borrowing to pay for a tax cut does. so we're getting a clue by that one ten—second answer on the tv of where to look in the next round of questions or the next labour iteration of their policies. that's right. and there's a lot in common between the labour and tory economic plans, right? they sort of accept the same broad turf. which is horrific turf. which is grim turffor anybody looking at it. but they accept the same broad bit. there are some differences round the edge, but one of the differences that is really important is that limit on borrowing for different kinds of spending. and if you, just to give people some context, and i know some people object to trying to use metaphors to explain this stuff, i think actually it's quite important to try to do it, so you kind of understand.

but borrowing for capital spending is a bit like if you took out a mortgage to buy a house or for a day to day spending, you buy loads of new frocks on your credit card. they're not the same kind of spending... have you seen my credit card bill? is it really big? you've only got one credit card?! do you think that that's a new kind of angle? well, what's interesting about election campaigns is as soon as you answer one question and shut down one thing, it actually then opens up other things. and it's like that whole whac—a—mole cliche because then and you could see it playing out on laura's show. so it's like, ok, if you're not going to raise income tax and get yourself loads more revenue and you're only going to get yourself a little bit of extra revenue from things like the non—dom stuff, and is it called carried interest? oh, yes. the private equity funds and increasing the tax on that a bit. then the moles that pop up are like, "well, 0k, yeah, these really tough spending plans that the conservatives have pencilled in, which would involve quite big cuts in departments like criminaljustice and things like that, well then, 0k,

you're basically signing up to them, which will make governing quite hard and make people quite unhappy." and then the other mole that pops up and it popped up in laura's interview is like, "0k, people like gordon brown looking at socialjustice say, well, hang on, if this is what you're going to do, then you're going to have to carry on with policies on benefits like the two child rule, which lots of labour supporters and people in the left of the party are very upset with." including gordon brown, right? and he is the chancellor, who, going into �*97, he said "we will stick to tory spending plans for two years and we will not raise income tax." so he has been in a similar position to reeves in some ways, being a labour chancellor hopeful, trying desperately to persuade people that they can be trusted with the country's money. but in this circumstance, even he's saying, hang on guys, you've got the priorities wrong here. the context, of course, is massively different. in that 1997, the economy was powering along. in 2024, it is absolutely not. but you know, labour, keir starmer and rachel reeves�*

answer on this is, look, we've got to have priorities. we can't do everything because the tories smashed it all up. so their political argument goes, but it's still hard for them. it comes hot on the heels of the interview on the today programme with sir keir when he was asked, "oh, you backed ending tuition fees when you were running to be leader of the labour party. you're still the same man, and now that you want to get elected, oh, you don't." that's right. and he's got to have the answer, that those things happened. but look what happened in the middle — a pandemic. lots of different things happen, guys. so i wonder if what actually gordon brown said was better than what rachel reeves said because adding this little tiny phrase for two years is quite different thing than we will not raise taxes, which is what she said to you on the tv this morning. she said for a whole parliament, that's what she's implying. and she also, she just doesn't want to touch the notion of cuts. so she says, "i don't want cuts." that doesn't mean there aren't going to be cuts. they're already in the pipeline. she can't stop the cuts.

well, she could. she could, were she to rip up the sort of overall promise that they are making to the public. but i would say, you know, bookmark the day when she said i'm not going to raise income tax and national insurance because if she does make it to number 11 and the economy doesn't grow convincingly, which is, of course, what they all say has to happen, but no government can guarantee that the economy will grow. you can't guarantee that there might not be another conflict, there might be another pandemic or all those things. and if you've boxed yourself in on tax cuts, on not doing tax raises, you're kind of knitting yourself a straitjacket. a knitted straitjacket. one of the nicer types of straitjacket. it's the kind of thing you might see on a jean paul gaultier catwalk. on another note, though, labour's plan for workers' rights, which is called the new deal, now isn't it? no, it's now called making work pay. we talked about this yesterday. yeah, so you can, paddy very archly and entertainingly yesterday

pointed out that something like making work pay sounds more like a conservative voter—friendly policy than a new deal for workers, which sounds much more like a sort of union—friendly policy. were you convinced by her answer when you said, "oh, you've wanted this down." "and so, for example, you said you'd ban fire and rehire where people get well fired and then rehired into the same job on less good terms." and actually, they're sort of not entirely banning it. 0h, they have watered it down because the original thing said an outright complete ban. and now it says, in exceptional circumstances, as long as you go through a process. what unite the union, who are one of their biggest backers, who've told me that they were not going to sign up to these proposals, what they say is, look, if you look at ba or you look at p&0 and other places where this happened, companies were restructuring. that was their case. they said, "we have to restructure or else we're going to fall over." and i don't want to impugn the motives of any particular company. so let's talk about in one generic case, companies say, "we're on the edge, we have to restructure," and then they can

carry on and do it. rachel reeves was trying to say, look, those will be sort of the most exceptional of circumstances. what unite would say back to that is, look, actually you've put lots and lots of holes in this. and companies that are trying to play tough in dire circumstances, they will make the most of all the loopholes. and we're going to move on, i know. but here's something else about the tax burden. it's the highest since the 1940s. so if you really did want to go there and have some wiggle room to put it up, i mean, the conservatives have presided over the biggest tax take since just after the war. so, you know, that's been the criticism from within the right that why are you behaving like the labour party? that's been the whole... and there'll be listeners on the right now listening to us now, saying get tax down. absolutely. that's a big dividing line. but that's what i love about how the public finances work, though. it's like a constant roller—coaster and you're never quite sure if you're going up or down. so actually it's one of those roller—coasters where you've twisted round, i think, actually, and you're like, am i up? so for example, one of the big

things that means the tax burden is going to be so high is because of the freezing of the different thresholds. oh, no, you're going to say fiscal drag. i was going to not say fiscal drag because people hate that word. so i'm going to explain it. i was going to not say fiscal drag because people hate that word. so i'm going to explain it. does fiscal drag involves wearing a knitted straitjacket? well, i don't know. in some places, a tuesday night in soho. but my point was going to be those ok, so for weeks and months and months that we've talked about fiscal drag and jeremy hunt gets loads of money and because he freezes the rates at which people start paying higher rates of tax and that raises billions and billions and billions and billions over a decade. however, though, what the economists are starting to say now is that, oh, actually inflation has fallen quite far and quite fast. so actually, the extra billions that you're going to get from the fiscal drag might actually not be as huge as people were thinking a little while ago. which takes you back to our growth. which takes you back to growth. you don't get anywhere in the next parliament without growth. and the predictions are some growth, but not super saw away growth.

i say, it must be time to talk about national service. it must be. but can we close with just three headlines, if you've heard us all go on about economics for the last ten minutes, and none of us are economists, shall we just say labour and big deal have said today they're not going to put up income tax or national insurance. the overall state of the cash that the government has got is really, really tight, and whoever wins is probably going to be some kind of cut. love a bullet pointed list. there we are. marvellous. numbered bullet point. so let's talk about the military. well, so the whole time i've been a journalist and you know what? i don't know. does this happen when you get to 44, you get a bit sort of wistful and you start thinking about looking back in your career and thinking thinking about stories that have come up, like regular as clockwork. oh, yeah. national service, i think, has come up every couple of years. hasit? yes. david cameron used to bang on about it all the time. well, that was a national citizen service. but a version of this. because the thing is, the last national service men, and they were men, were discharged in 1963. so we've had a lot of years, 50,

50 odd years in which to consider if we're going to bring back a form of national service. so even you didn't have to do it. paddy, what was the war like? the falklands war! the falklands war. you'll notice how silent i was when you said when you get to 44, is it is it normal to think...? yeah, butjust on this, on the announcement, the prime minister wrote in the mail on sunday, "i want my two daughters to do a form of national service." it will be mandatory for all 18 year olds, but it's not conscription. it will include 25 days of voluntary service. and that could be lifeguarding first aiding. but all 18 year olds will have to do a thing if we get back. and actually, there's even more caveats to what they're actually announcing, because actually what they've announced, if you read the press release, is a royal commission at the start of the next parliament, which is basically likejust a very formal way of investigating a problem where you can bring

in the great and the good to apply their minds to it. so yeah, a royal commission to draw up plans for this national service, then a pilot scheme that would start in september 2025 with legislation to enshrine the actual finished design by the end of the next parliament. so actually, the earliest you'd have a whole cohort, to use a veryjargony word, of of 18 year olds doing this could potentially be what, 2028. well, yeah, but it's still, i mean, well, here's the thing. it's designed to sound like a massive deal. and it's also designed, i think we can be sceptical, not cynical, sceptical enough to say, this is absolutely designed to tickle the bellies of a certain kind of voter. who's going to think, nationalservice, good. that will give kids who might be hanging around, getting into trouble something to do, that will get a sense of discipline that will get the community together. and actually talking to tory sources about it last night,

they were saying, "well, yes, actually, one of the things is, you know, it will keep kids out of trouble and potential criminality. but actually what we're trying to do also is pull people together and have a kind of national spirit." but as you say, the detail of it is that it wouldn't be a very big dealfor a very long time. and it is not national service as people know it because there are only 30,000 places in the military part of it out of, i think about 700,000 18 year olds. so yeah, i mean, military service happens in around 85 countries in the world. the uk could easily introduce it. other countries do, sweden and north korea as a friendly example. however, i spoke to a military man, tim cross. he said, "look, it's really hard to turn it on after all these years of having it off, of not having national service, it's really hard to turn the key back on for national service after the after it ended

officially in 1960." so you have got the james cleverly, the home secretary explaining the thinking. and let's have a listen. too many young people living in their own bubble, - whether it be a digital bubble or a social bubble. _ and we want to get back- to the situation where people are mixing with young people from different areas, - different economic groups, different religions, - to try and find a way of addressing the kind of fragmentation. - what's interesting about, well, lots of things are interesting about this is, one, how they're going to pay for it. they say a combination of tax avoidance, which governments forever tried to save money from tax avoidance. it's also going to come from what's called the shared prosperity fund, which is basically the levelling up cash that was promised to towns around the country. and that is now going to be spent on something else, not on town centres and filling up potholes and other things that communities might have wanted as part of that gear, part of that promise. the other thing, it kind of conveys a message, actually

here he starts talking about fragmentation and society sort of having something wrong about it. and i think politically, that's quite an interesting message. it's also not necessarily a great message if you've been in charge for 1h years to say, actually, i think things are quite fragmented and young people don't really feel part of society. yeah, i mean, because the thing is, we go back to a theme that we should actually explore in greater depth, which is that there's a big win in optimism. and actually, the shining city on the hill is a good way in history to take voters with you. that's kind of what the appeal of attlee was in 1945, and he got nearly a 12% swing, beating winston churchill... in a july election. so, i mean, if all of them are going to doom us into the ballot box, they're missing a lesson from history. i'm sorry, no—one wants to be taught a lesson by me, but it's just that over the years, you do hear a lot of experienced politicians and historians say, "give us a tune to hum." you can'tjust tell me i fragment. oh, it's all awful. i mean, why should i go into the booth if it's all awful. yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? it's interesting. and you've got these two classic campaign messages that we've already seen. you've got the tories basically saying, "don't risk it, don't risk it, don't risk it."

and then you've got labour saying, "change, change, change." and in 2024, those are probably the two most traditional campaign messages out there. one is don't trust the other guy, it's scary. and the other is we're really nice and the world is going to change and that's basically where we're at. to whatsapp to round us off, we had a whatsapp from somebody who didn't leave their name, which is a shame. let's call them... mavis. mavis straightjacket. i don't know. that's the word thatjust popped into my head. i know anyone who's surname is straightjacket, but never mind. that sounds like the product of one of those games. one of those games, if you take your first pet's name and your mum's maiden name, what name do you come up with? i'll be quiet. let's not get into laura's

pornstar name because that game is really boring. no, there is a podcast in that. i mean, it's ben robertson. anyway, let me read out the whatsapp from whoever it was. mavis writes, "i reckon that 10% of mps who've announced they're standing down have reversible names, like stuart andrew." in other words, a surname that could be a first name." this is working on the assumption that bob stewart and bob neil are called robert. "this seems a very high proportion, who could be next?" so we then did our own bit of number crunching and we looked at all the mps who are standing down and we've got stuart andrew, bob stuart, bob neil, lucy allan, michael ellis, alisterjack, brandon lewis, wayne david, caroline lucas, lisa cameron, trudy harrison, sajid javid, andrew percy douglas ross, theresa may, joe gideon. all people who have surnames that could also be a first name. and we worked out that that is probably 19% of the mp who are standing down have so called reversible names. that's massive. i mean, that's what we

spent our morning doing. we werejust going through a list of names. that's amazing. can ijust pick you up on one? i mean, i'm really impressed. please do. people will think that transparency. theresa may. yeah. do we know many people with the surname theresa, other than mother? no, no, but it's... i think it's more. i don't know if that was her surname. no, i think it's more that it's surnames you can have as a first name rather than... well, that's a different game, then! it'sjust a high standard. we've got a new fact check strand on my programme on sunday mornings. with my martini claim yesterday. i thought you were going to say,

do you know anyone who's got the first name may? because i was going to say mae martin, the comedian. yes. i mean, i knowa lot of people called may, of people called may, and june. april. i mean, i think i could go on. have we got time to fill? i know someone called autumn. i always think that's a very pretty name, ifeel. can i say that it's a joy for me to have adam and laura reunited. i mean, it's professionally, it's quite challenging because obviously i don't want it to i don't want it to be better. but i mean, it'sjust lovely and it's lovely of you to come in on sunday because you do all of this for us all the time. thanks for coming. very nice to have you. i've done my weekend voluntary service. and you got to wear your new t shirt on tv. it's actually my friend's t shirt that i borrowed as a little reference to our favourite film. that's sweet. and it must be the end, because we're now doing t—shirts... the new newscast fashion item. oh, yeah. you're wearing your lipstickjacket, though. i call it the lipstickjacket, even though it's not kisses. hi always think it is kisses.

i always think it is kisses. yeah, it's leopard. i mean, there's so many red leopards around. yeah, it's leopard. i feel very much that listeners will say thank you for what you've done. you've done enough. so it's goodbye. thank god for that. bye! newscast from the bbc.

live from london. this is bbc news. rishi sunak says he'll bring back mandatory national service for 18—year olds if the conservatives win the general election. meanwhile labour's been answering questions on its plan for the economy, it promises not to increase income tax, if it wins on polling day. sirens heard across tel aviv — as hamas says its launched a large missile attack on the city — the first in months. the united nations says almost 700 people are feared dead following a landslide in papua new guinea. twelve people have been injured — eight taken to hospital — after a flight from doha to dublin suffered turbulence. and — who will return to the premier league?

southampton lead 1 nil to leeds united in the championship