and we will answer that question, connor. we will answer it, but you have to keep listening. and a few other things to go through today. sure. yeah. we have the various commitments made that seem to be fairly new commitments on welfare reform. and we also have the previews for the manifestos. it's going to be an exciting episode of this sunday's newscast. newscast from the bbc. hello, it's laura in the studio. it's faisel in the studio too. it's james in glasgow. hurray! how nice to have the two of you with me here on a sunday afternoon, having been abandoned by paddy and henry and adam and everybody else. i fought my way through thickets of pollen. apparently, it's all male trees that try and mate with you.

what? someone planted only male plain trees. and this is why pollen is horrific at this time. is that true? i've wondered for years because i used to... working in westminster you used to get absolutely clobbered and like crying on the news, not because of the stories, but because of the pollen. maybe a little bit of that. but, yes, that's what it is. and it's all down. apparently the australians got rid of it. i looked at this a lot because anyway, if i sneeze that is why. tree cast coming soon. so, well let's start with today's news then because it's been a really busy, busy, busy election morning, not with one big gigantic story, but lots of different things coming out. the tories were talking about more changes to the benefit system that they want to do, extra cash for some mental health talking therapies. labour are talking about more prison places, and the difference between them and the conservatives on that is that they would give a justice secretary the power just to build a prison in a community rather than having to go through the planning system where they shock, horror get stuck. and the lib dem manifesto is coming tomorrow, and they've been talking today about trying to tackle ambulance delays by improving social care, which, as we've talked

about so many times, prominent politicians have fudged the solution for caring for our elderly and vulnerable for so long. and labour, lastly, has had an attack from the snp saying they can't implement the cuts that number crunchers spell out they'd have to have. it would be more austerity. where's the money going to come from? so faisal, the common theme across all of those things is the cash. and when you look at this and where things are going in this election, what are the big questions in terms of how their sums add up or don't? a lot of the numbers that have been bandied about up until this point is pure fiscal shadow—boxing, right? they don't have the numbers. we're going to get the manifestos. we're going to get, i think, costing documents or at least some part of those manifestos showing they quote unquote, all add up. everything up until this point has been essentially an accusation from one side to the other about how on some other set of assumptions they might not add up.

and, you know, and we've seen, again, the conservatives have double down on their £2,000 labour tax rise claim. they'll be delighted i've just mentioned that again. but that, you know, they want to carry on saying that. i think the big news for me, you have to reverse engineer this announcement and we'll get into the detail on welfare. we'll get into the detail on the actual welfare announcement. you know, perfectly plausible that you might think that you can save money on a bill that's kind of going up. i think we could even say ballooning since the pandemic. there are reasons for that. but why have they announced 12 billion of savings today, this weekend, on sunday, with the manifesto coming out on tuesday? to my mind, that creates... it's manifesto accounting. i would call it that. it creates a pot, quote unquote, that you can spend, quote unquote, on some sort of manifesto offer. so we had some briefing on friday about the shape of some of the tax cuts. it looks rather modest, i think it's fair to say, in terms of like was there a big bazooka there that

could change the game. you start to think, "ah right. they're going to spend the 12 billion on something". it brings back into play, maybe inheritance tax or some big national insurance move. that's why you would do this, i think. and we'll get into this later. the 12 billion has been severely questioned by the ifs and others, but i think that's the direction of travel as a result of the announcements that we've got this weekend. so there could be a promise inheritance tax cuts in the tory manifesto. and we know that conservative activists theoretically should lap that up. whether it would have a difference on voters at this stage in the game, james, i don't know. no. and well, that's a good question, because you talked a lot this morning about the undecided voter, didn't you, laura? and it's interesting to to ponder how many of those there might be or how many people, after 11; years of conservative rule, might have perhaps made up their mind about whether they like what they see or they don't like what they see.

i wonder if, and i think this was reflected in some of the chat you had in the panel as well, whether some people are still waiting — voters, i mean — to see precisely what labour is going to spell out on this in the manifesto, because there's been so much talk about change, hasn't there? and then the question that keeps rebounding on keir starmer is what precisely does that change look like? and that's what the snp are trying to tap into here by suggesting in their view that there isn't a great deal of substance around that change. and therefore their argument as well as we heard stephen flynn making this morning, look, if you want substantive change, significant change, and you want a party that will hold both labour and the tories to account on delivering substantive change, then you need to vote for someone else. now, you can get into a whole load of detail or debate about whether that's a credible position and whether the snp or any other party will deliver change.

but i wonder if it doesn't all come back to the same thing, which is, are our politicians, all of them, being honest about the state of the economy, about how well we're growing or otherwise, about productivity in this country, and about the direction of travel, and therefore about how much money they have available to spend? and i think a lot of people would say the pretty clear answer that is no. and john caldwell, the billionaire who founded and made lots of money from phones for you, was on our panel this morning. and really interesting, he gave lots of money to borisjohnson. he's basically now takes a very dim view of rishi sunak. he has had entreaties from labour trying to get him onside. he's not convinced by labour. and he said to me this morning, like, he's lost, he's like a lost voter, and he doesn't think any of them are being radical or credible, really, on the economy. and particularly, he's very interested in green investment and climate change, and he thinks basically they're all missing a big opportunity, but the "don't knows" are still there, right? they absolutely are still there.

and when you talk to both parties, both the big parties and the snp and the lib dems and the greens, when you talk to all the parties that all tell you that "don't knows" are still there in a surprising proportion at this election. shall we have a listen, though, to how mel stride tried to say that they'd be able to pay for some of the very many policies that they have announced already? compare our record. there's something called the tax gap, which is the difference - in what we should be bringing in through tax and _ what we actually do. and you do lots of work on it. indeed, but the point is, - judge us by our track record. so, under labour in 2526, that figure was up around | seven plus percent. under ourselves, it was down at - about four point something percent. so the evidence is we are much better at doing this now. - you're right, labour are saying they'll...| you have been in charge for 13 years. labour are saying they'll get five billion years - and we're saying six, - so we're in a similar ballpark, but we have the track record - to deliver and all of those measures |that you've just shown there, laura, | most of them are covered by that six plus billion in 2029.

but if you're so great at cracking down on tax avoidance and getting money back for our hardworking people, why don't you done already? well, we have been doing it, - and there's more that we can do. well, i just want to put on the record, politicians nearly always say they can get more money back from tax avoidance, and they don't nearly always manage to get as much back as they want, so just to put that on the record, and apparently our fact checkers found that tax avoidance had already been coming down under labour. and basically what's happened is the graph going down has continued under the conservatives, but there isn't a big contrast particularly which he was trying to claim there. so, interesting. but faisal, tell us about this 12 billion then, because i think that is really interesting, and maybe a big pointer to some quite big news on tuesday. so the six billion that you rightly asked about is the tax avoidance, and that helps fund most of the giveaways from national service to the triple lock plus that we've had so far.

so the 12 billion, as i was saying a moment ago, opens up some extra space for something ahead of the manifesto. is the 12 billion fair? well, it comes essentially from savings on welfare spending that was, pre—pandemic, £49 billion per year. it is now 69 billion, and it's heading tojust below 80 billion by 2028-29. so on the face of it, you are slowing the rate of growth from 49 up to 80, and then may be 12 billion. that is the problem is that many of the things, many of the steps that they have detailed today are already factored in to the 80 billion. and the biggest one there isn't, you know, it seems difficult to think you'd save 12 billion from that. you might be able save 12 billion from others. you know, i rememberthere's a famous debate about 12 billion of welfare savings in the 2015 general election, and it did more or less achieve that eventually. the ifs have been hugely critical, really straightaway, straight out of the blocks, saying essentially that this

is a heroic assumption and it seems pretty unlikely that they would reach that based on what they have announced. but as i said, it's a piece of manifesto accounting that provides some space. and what's interesting is labour's response, because you could be tempted if you're labour to say, "well if they assume 12 billion, we can also assume 12 billion and we'll have 12 billion to spend on something". they've just said it's been plucked out of thin air. they feel confident enough just to attack it as a piece of fancy accounting. so what we're saying clearly today is that the tories are saying, "look, we can save 12 billion quid from making changes to the welfare system". but the independent number crunchers. the ifs have looked at the sums, and they've gone., "hm, not sure if that adds up. james, you've got your hand up. that's so polite. well, ijust had one thing... i'm like a teacher. just power in. ..thatjust struck me, which is, and i'd be interested to know what you both think about this, isn't the question before you even get to whether the numbers are credible is are these people genuinely disabled or not? these people who are claiming this benefit.

and is it not at least possible that because of the crisis in the nhs, and i've spent unfortunately a lot of time in hospitals and other nhs services in glasgow in the last six months, and i can assure you that everyone you speak to there thinks it is in crisis. is it not possible that the sky rocketing waiting lists, which means that people are waiting longer and longerfor one piece of treatment, their condition might deteriorate, that might be exacerbated, they might have other conditions that develop as a result of that, that that is, at least in part, what is contributing to the rise in those disability payments. and therefore, you can't completely disentangle the idea of tackling the welfare system from fixing the nhs. i think that's absolutely right, and i think that's one of the reasons why welfare reform has always been very, very difficult, and there's a long list of reasons why it's always been very difficult — is one that often you're talking about people with very, very significant needs.

secondly, you're often talking about people with significant needs connected to all sorts of different public services. you know, it's notjust, "oh, well, you claim your benefit, end of story. we cut your benefit or we make you go back to work". you know, often these are people with very, very complicated issues. then, of course, there are in the system people who maybe don't need the amount of support they get. and i'm not saying, i'm not making accusations, but obviously there is some level of benefit fraud and people making claims that they don't that most taxpayers would think that they don't deserve. but that also is very difficult to kind of crack down on. and what you have seen over a long period is both of the parties actually become more and more interested in what they fancily call conditionality. in other words, making it harder for people to get taxpayers cash, even if they'rejudged to need it. there are kind of more hoops and more obstacles that you have to get over, but the bill is absolutely ginormous and is getting bigger. so it's a real challenge for all politicians whether or not

their sums on it actually add up. so i think the conservatives would argue, they have recognised exactly what you say by putting about half a billion into talking therapies. so you get offered the therapy upfront, so then you don't have to pay the benefit later. the bigger point, though, is that there's been a structural change in the economy post pandemic. more people are likely to say, particularly younger people, that they have a sort of mental health condition that will prevent them from doing work and therefore need benefits. that is a change. and whoever gets in to government in a month's time will have to address this in some way. it's a cultural thing, maybe. and obviously prevention is better than cure. everyone's going to argue that up front, but... uh, you know, can they actually come up practically with a solution? well, that's, you know, that's the question. and this plays into the debate here in scotland in a particularly interesting way, faisal. because what you have here is really, particularly in the central belt of scotland,

the old industrial central belt, and particularly glasgow, it's a discussion about who are the genuine inheritors of the old labour left—leaning vote in this city and other big and old industrial heartlands around it. and one of the big issues that's coming up in that debate, and you're hearing the snp trying to hammer home is, "look," they say, "that both labour and the conservatives take a similar approach on this issue, both in terms of their levels of public spending and in terms of their approach to welfare and trying to just control" as they would, i think see it, labour and the tories, the welfare budget. and there's been a particular row about this two child benefit cap, this idea that you can only claim benefit at universal credit or tax credits on the first two children in a family, and the snp campaigning hard, saying that that's cruel and unfair and needs to be loosened up and expanded to other children or back to what it was.

labour giving the sense that they want to do that, but they are just being careful with the purse strings. but that's a dividing line as people are fighting here, particularly here in glasgow, to see whether labour can win back some of that support that went to the snp last time, like which is the authentic left—leaning party. and it's a challenge for labour, absolutely, in terms of wrangling their left flank right, whether that's in scotland where the compass, if you like, is a little bit further to the left, maybe not as much as people would sometimes think there's a massive difference between the scottish vote and the english vote, but the compass is probablyjust a little bit further to the left. but in terms of what labour was offering today is not something that's going to get people sort of going wild on the isles necessarily. so their offer today from shabana mahmood was to carry on with the tories commitment to build 20,000 extra prison places, but to change the planning rules so that it could actually do them very quickly. and what was interesting to me

as well was that the conservatives have been letting prisoners out early because the prisons are so full. shabana mahmood this morning was very reluctant to spell out that labour would probably also keep doing that if they win. she did though not rule it out, but she was very hesitant actually to kind of spell that out because no politician will say, "yeah, sure, we're letting offenders out early". but it was quite clear she thinks she might have to carry on with that, but she said they'd publish the numbers if they do and if they've won. part of the reason we've got overcrowding in our prisonsl is because the government has run out of space, because they haven'tj i delivered the full 20,000 prison. places that they said they would do by next year. it's actually not a money problem in that respect. j the money has already been allocated in the ministry ofjustice budget. - it's actually a failure _ of the government because they've allowed the planning system to get in the way, and they've allowed - complaints from their members of parliament, backbenchers i in particular, to stop any building in our country. i so this is actually— about the government having the will to get prisons built. on day one, we would designate prisons as being of national- importance so that those decisions

are ultimately made _ by ministers rather— than the usual planning process. love to hear from newscasters, as you know, do get in touch with us like lewis from colchester, who's been in touch with this question about manifestos. hello, newscast. lewis here from colchester. my question is, when can we expect to see each . of the parties manifestos, and what is the strategy l behind the timing of this? is it better to go early- or are parties keen to force opponents to show their hands first? well, i think lewis is suggesting that there's some sort of like game of poker over whether you show your hand, like maybe fiscally. my sense is that we know that what's in the labour manifesto is hammered down because they had their union meeting on friday. yes. so it's kind of firmly in place. so they're not going to get to react to what happens on tuesday and the conservative manifesto. no. and have you ever known anyone

to sort of change the manifesto as a result of what they've heard in other manifestos? well, i know, no, but i know that the tory manifesto wasn't printed as of yesterday. 0k. which is of little fun fact, it's printed today. and i get the feeling that that was a much more fluid process, right? so they want the option. however, remember, they're also paranoid about this. so the labour manifesto leaked before me and a couple of other journalists got their sticky paws on the labour manifesto. 2017. yeah, in 2017. that worked out 0k in a funny way. it sort of propelled them a little bit. oh, well i think some people in the labour party were delighted that it was like four days covering instead of two. but the manifestos, you know, i don't think there's this sort of underhand plotting way of doing it, but there certainly is. the parties think very carefully every day about what the others are doing, right? they're all watching the chess pieces on the board and who's going to do what, when. as far as we know the lib dems are tomorrow, the snp is much later on isn't it, james?

yeah, the 19th. and the tories are on tuesday we think, and labour on thursday. james, tell us, stephen flynn this morning said the snp has not given up on independence even though i think friday night in the debate was one of the first times i've seen an snp politician on stage for more than an hour and hardly ever mention independence. from looking at the campaign rather than talking about what's in their soul, from looking at the campaign, does it look like they've given up for now? so, i think what was striking was that what we heard from stephen flynn in the debate and indeed in your interview this morning was not really necessarily the same as we're hearing from john swinney in news conferences and campaign events in terms of independence. john swinney has actually been mentioning independence quite a lot. and for me, stephen flynn has advanced in both of these big uk wide set piece tv occasions over the last 48 hours or so has advanced half of the argument on the snp from the snp's perspective, which is, "look, britain isn't working, he calls it broken brexit, britain, as we were saying earlier,

they will say it's low growth, it's low productivity, it's high inequality. and not only that, this isn't just, in their view, a conservative problem. labour do not have a credible plan to be able to tackle that and fundamentally sort out the british state. but he didn't get to the next bit, which is whatjohn swinney has been getting to in the campaign, which is and therefore, in their view, you know, number one. and mr flynn did say this a little bit. you need to we need to have snp mps at westminster holding the government's feet to the fire in the words of the deputy first minister kate forbes, this week. but the other bit is, and in the longer term, for scotland to escape what they regard as this failing state — independence could be the answer. and one of the reasons why i find it slightly odd that they might not want to talk about independence is because the polling for independence is higher at the moment than the polling for the snp.

it's hovering once you exclude, "don't knows" and "won't says" just under 50%. you can have a long debate about what that would actually look like if people were to vote tomorrow or if they were to vote at the end of a real campaign. but nonetheless, that's what the polls suggestjust now. whereas snp support has dropped pretty sharply over the last year or so for perhaps a whole host of reasons they have. they've been in government for a long time. they're coming under pressure to vote. their handling of the public services has been a police investigation into their finances. they've had a couple of changes of leader. i mean, that's the brief. that's a whole other. i think we've done a whole other podcasts on that or another on other occasions. shall we talk about nigel farage? now, nigel farage, who's made a lot of news this week by saying he would stand after he said he wouldn't stand and sort of declaring himself the leader of reform uk. reform uk is the only place really where there's been much

movement in the polls. they have been closing the gap between themselves and the tories and there is tory panic which we discussed yesterday about could there be a crossover moment and actually they overtake. that hasn't happened yet. but could it or could it not? now, one of the things we want to talk about with nigel farage this morning was what he said about rishi sunak missing the d—day commemorations. now, we've all talked about rishi sunak�*s mistake endlessly, but this morning we discussed with him what he'd said about rishi sunak. he said, like every other politician, including rishi sunak himself, said it was a terrible mistake for him to leave. but he went on to say "it showed that rishi sunak not just wasn't a patriot, but didn't understand our history and our culture". and we wanted to know this morning, what did he mean by that and what was he trying to get at? he should have known in his heart that it was right to be there. - i was there. i've been raising moneyj for some weeks to send

veterans back to normandy. the vast majority of people - in britain felt this commemoration was important, and the last| opportunity to honour those the remnants, that are still alive. and by the way, i know what your question is leading at — 40% - of our contribution in world war one and world war two came _ from the commonwealth. he is utterly disconnected by class, by privilege, from how the ordinary folk in this country feel. he revealed that, i think, spectacularly when he - left normandy early. now shabana mahmood for labour told us actually she thought the comments were a dog whistle. in other words, they were trying to stir up racists, they were trying to stir up anti—immigrant feeling. on the basis of the prime minister's ethnic background. on the basis of the prime minister's background, yeah. so i mean, i think what she described it as a sort of classic nigel farage moment where he dangles something and then just steps back. and mel stride, who is a very close ally of rishi sunak, said he had found it deeply uncomfortable. he said it was very regrettable. he didn't want to sort of go full

blast at nigel farage. but i think this may well, not necessarily these specific comments, but i think as the reform campaign proceeds, i think there is likely to be more scrutiny and more pressure on this kind of moment. he's claiming now to newspapers, as he did to the express, they put it on the front page, that he wants to be the real opposition. he is trying to obliterate the tory party and then find a big role for himself in national politics, actually in parliament, rather than somebody who's incredibly famous but on the sidelines. but i just wonder if this is going to attract their positions and their statements, and their comments on things like this are going to start to attract more attention because they're obviously very serious players in this general election as of today. even though you were very slightly late, it was very lovely to spend some of sunday morning with you and newscast will back tomorrow with adam and chris, and i'm sure a few other members of the gang, faisal will be here through the week with his giant calculator as the manifestos emerge.

and abacus. i'll be here on thursday and then saturday and sunday. but who knows? who knows? who knows what the next week will bring? for now, let's bring this to a close. and thank you, everybody, for listening. goodbye. bye. newscast from the bbc. hello there. weather for the week ahead is perhaps not the story you want. no significant summer sunshine or warmth, i'm afraid. in fact, the story in armagh on sunday really sets the scene — just a high of ten degrees. we had cloudy skies with light rain or drizzle with a cool northerly wind as well. now, that rain is sinking its way steadily southwards and it will clear away from eastern england and southeast england during monday morning. behind it, this northerly wind and this cooler air source starts to kick in across the country. so a rash of showers, a cold, brisk wind driving those showers in off exposed coasts and drifting their way steadily south across scotland and northern ireland as we go through the morning. here's our cloud and rain still lingering across east yorkshire, lincolnshire first thing in the morning, some heavier bursts that will ease away.

best of any brighter skies, perhaps across southern england down to the southwest. here, showers should be few and further between. but nevertheless, that wind direction still really digging in right across the country. so sunny spells, scattered showers, a brisk northwesterly wind for many, so temperatures just below par really for this time of year, a maximum of 10—15 degrees for most. we might see highs of 17 or 18 if we get some sunshine across south west england and wales. now, as we move out of monday into tuesday, the low pressure drifts off to scandinavia, high pressure builds. it should start to kill off some of the showers out to the west. but with those clearing skies, well, those temperatures will be below par through the night as well, low single figures for some, quite a chilly start to our tuesday morning. hopefully some sunshine around on tuesday. there will continue to be some showers, most frequent ones running down through central and eastern scotland and england. further west, some brighter skies and once again, highs of 17 degrees,

but for many, just a maximum of 10—15 once again. moving out of tuesday into wednesday, winds will fall lighter still for a time, but there's another low pushing in and that will bring some wetter weather to close out the end of the working week. it will gradually start to change the wind direction. so, after a drier day on wednesday, it will turn that little bit milder, but also wetter as we head into the weekend.

the headlines. exit polls suggest far right parties have made big gains in elections for the european parliament. france's far right national rally party takes almost a third of the votes. president macron responds by calling a snap election. translation: i decided to put back in your hands the choice l it's of our parliamentary future. in a few moments, i will sign a decree convening the legislative elections which will take place onjune a 30 for the first round and july 7 for the second round.

narendra modi is sworn in as the indian prime ministerfor a record third time. and the party getting started as celebrations kick off around the world forjune's pride month. exit polls suggest there have been big gains forfar right parties, in elections to the european parliament. this was the first projection for the 720—seat assembly — the darker colours to the right representing those right of centre parties — seem to have moved to take up

more of the seats.