this is bbc world news. the headlines... russian officials are staging self—styled referendums in four occupied regions of ukraine — on whether they should become part of the russian federation. western countries say the votes are illegal and a step towards the annexation of ukrainian territory. un investigators say russia has committed war crimes in ukraine, including executions, torture and sexual violence. they also found that ukrainians had been forcibly transferred to russia, where they described being beaten and given electric shocks. the bodies of 71 migrants have been found, after the boat they were travelling in sank off syria's coast. the boat carried more than 100 people. it is not clear what caused the accident.

italy's political parties have been holding their final campaign rallies ahead of sunday's parliamentary election. giorgia meloni's right—wing "brothers of italy" party now on bbc news, it's newscast. chris, what are you doing on the 18th of october? the 18th of october? what day of the week is that? i know they say a week is a long time in politics — a month must be a lot for you. exactly! i can't even think about the labour conference, which starts this weekend. it seems an eternity away, so the 18th of october, i have no idea. you tell me — what am i doing, adam? you have got a diary invite on your phone calendar for castfest — the first inaugural castfest — where in the bbc radio theatre in central london we are going to bring together newscast, ukrainecast and americast fora massive, mammoth, live podcasting recording.

it's going to be amazing, and hopefully you're going to be there. i did know about this, i just didn't know when it was. i think it was probably in this thing somewhere, but it wasn't impressed upon my mind that it was the 18th of... was it the 18th?! this is good marketing, though, because you're saying the date over and over again, which is what you're meant to do in an advert, which is good. alex, i don't know if you have the same issue as i've had a few times, and actually newscaster dawn did as well. she keeps reading it as catsfest. it does look like catsfest! is that like a really bad version of a musical that's happening? interesting you went for the musical — i went for the animal. i went for a giant, live pet show podcast. i mean, that could be more fun, perhaps. a spin—off pets podcast. could you call it catsfest? no, catscast! newscats! oh, no, we had the newscats once. anyway, the basic is, we're doing castfest on the 18th of october, and if you go to any

of our social medias or go on the bbc news website, you will find the details of how to get tickets, and you'll be able to see such luminaries as victoria derbyshire, justin webb, sarah smith, gabriel gatehouse and, yeah, me and chris — if chris can remember to turn up. anyway, that's going to be in the glamorous radio theatre at the bbc. welcome to just the normal newscast kind of cupboard. newscast from the bbc. hello, it's adam in the studio. hello, it's alex in the studio. and it's chris in the street. what street? just a random street? i'm in south london. just recovering from a little trip that i have done with the prime minister. it just seemed to flow, saying "in the street" after you said the studio. yeah, you didn't say studio 79bcd, did you?

fairenough. ——actually, they kind of have! they really kind of have. yeah. i mean, i'll do the short version and then chris can do the long version. so let me just give you the wham—bam of what's happened. if that's all right, chris, if that works for you, a quick wham—bam? day one of this three days of government was this package of energy support for business, because you know businesses were feeling like, whoa, loads of households are getting help with their energy bills, what's happening to us? so we heard that. day two was a big health announcement. so government priorities to tackle things like backlogs in the nhs, the time it takes you to get a gp surgery. day three, and that's friday, the one we are still awaiting, that's the biggie. it is the non—budget, mini—budget, fiscal event — call it what you want. but what it's going to be is big changes to tax, big changes to spending. the government claims it is going to grow the economy and lots of people are saying, let's see... that was pretty comprehensive, i think.

i don't know if i've got much more to add. you're right, there'sjust this absolute kind of news blitz. i can't quite believe it's only thursday night as we're recording this. and as far as friday is concerned, and this thing, this event... westminster has got itself in a knot about what to call it. it was called a fiscal event, which is just horrible. and then people started saying mini—budget, but that's not much good, either, because it's much bigger than something that deserves the word "mini" attached to it. it's not a budget in the conventional westminster language. we're not going to find out that a packet of cigarettes has gone up by 76p or whatever. but in terms of its scale, particularly when you are binding the help for households and the help for businesses with energy bills as well as tax stuff, it's really, really big. and there's, i think, a real sense of a trussian world view — what she wants to do in government. whether she can achieve it is a massive other thing. but i think we'll get a real sense by the end of tomorrow — we kind of got it already from plenty of the stuff that we got on the trip to new york

with the prime minister and then what we have heard from the health secretary and all the rest of it. but by the end of tomorrow we'll have a proper sense of, this is what the truss government wants to try and achieve. and then we'll be able to kind of measure its success against its own kind of metrics, based on what they say in the coming weeks, months and years. and there's already some detail about what's going to be in this big fiscal statement because on thursday the treasury confirmed that they are going to repeal the increase in national insurance that there was this year, and the health and social care levy that was going to replace that on a permanent basis from 2023 — remember, that was the 1.25 percentage point increase in the rate of national insurance which came in at the start of the year, which the government had already tweaked by increasing the threshold at which you start paying national insurance, because they were criticised for taxing people on low incomes too much. so today kwasi kwarteng, the chancellor, said that that's going to be repealed. and it will be repealed from the start of november, not for the next tax year,

so this whole thing of, "we're hitting the ground running, we are going to start doing things really fast" — they are doing that basically as soon as they could. yeah, they really are. and i think there'll be some other stuff in there as well. so the times the other day was reporting a suggestion that there might be a cut in stamp duty, the tax that some people pay when they buy property. and certainly speaking to those around the prime minister, they were not seeking to run away from that or deny it or say it was a load of old rubbish. and i think there will be some stuff on investment zones. some call them freeports, but they don't necessarily have to be next to the sea. basically, geographically defined entities where you cut taxes, liberalise planning rules, to try and turbo—charge economic growth in those areas. those who argue in favour of them say you can really focus on areas that need a bit of an economic zap in the arm. critics say you just end up transferring growth from one place to another and it doesn't actually increase the pie overall.

but i think it will feel very kind of different and new tomorrow. yes, it's a continuation of a conservative government that in one way or another has been in power since 2010, but actually, with a new person at the top and a very, very different instinct economically, i think it'll feel different from thejohnson era and very different from the cameron and 0sborne era. just a super—quick thought on the timing... i don't think this is just a political thing that they want to be seen to hit the ground running — they've kind of got to, right, because you are talking the strategy here is, we are going to grow the economy. you have got potentially two years until the next election and the economy is not in a great place. there is a real time pressure on them. we can discuss some of those issues with tonight's guests. we are joined in the newscast studio by lord karan bilimoria, who founded cobra beer and is now a big boss at the cbi — who founded cobra besr and is now a big boss at the cbi — the confederation of british industry. hello. hello, good to be with you. i can tell you've come from the house of lords because you've got posh notepaper and you're wearing a tie! judgey! and we've got natasha loder, who is a health policy

editor from the economist. hi, natasha. hello, hello! welcome to the studio, because you've been on zoom before, so it's nice to actually see you in real—life. right, let's do the economy first. lord bilimoria, this announcement we're going to get from kwasi kwarteng, we keepjoking... is it a budget, a mini—budget, fiscal event? from your soundings around it, how huge is it going to be, do you reckon? i think this is absolutely terrific. ll've been saying for a long time| when i was president of the cbi, going back to february 2021, to the then chancellor — - don't increase taxes. whatever you do, don't, - because it will stifle the recovery and it will hamper growth. did he listen? no. and we've got up to the stage of having the highest - tax burden in 70 years. i think that is absolute madness at any time, | let alone when we have suffered as businesses for two _ years in a pandemic, - then the sad war in ukraine, then the energy crisis and inflation and labour shortages. _ the crisis is continuing. so i then said earlier this year to the chancellor, . you can't stop helping. £400 billion. thank you, great — .

save the businesses, save the economy, unemployment really low — but you can't stop helping. did he listen? no. then eventually, we had a bit of help for consumers. - £37 billion, if you remember, a few months ago. _ so where is the help for businesses? "oh, no, no." you've got to help. businesses as well. so you're quite glad to see the back of rishi sunak, then? i'm very happy that liz truss' policies is exactly _ what i've been saying. i made a speech when i stepped down as president of the cbi. _ it's almost as if she's been reading from my speech. l maybe she has. it's reducing taxes - and so reversing this 2.5%. it's1.25% and 1.25 employers' - and employees' national insurance. that's a tax on jobs. great announcement that we are . removing that, reversing that now. corporation tax, going up from 19% to 25% in one swoop. _ that was going to be damaging business and damaging - inward investment. that's no longer going to happen. and i hope they'll go further. i've said before, bring that 1% reduction in income tax that l rishi sunak talked about doing before the next election. - do it now.

we need the help right now. and, of course, more help. there is more help i that's needed as well. so this government is doing absolutely the right things. | i wonder how bleak, bluntly, you think things are right now, economically? if ten is as bad as it gets and one is brilliant, how bad are things? things are really very, very bad. businesses are struggling in a big way, particularly small— and medium—sized enterprises are struggling in a huge way. i and that's why the help i for businesses, in terms of the energy reduction, which will be an average reduction of about 40% for a lot of businesses. | most businesses have - seen their energy costs go up by a minimum of 300%. that's not viable. and businesses were going to go bust. - and so that move, the energy help for businesses, - on top of the energy help for consumers, was - absolutely essential. so it's very bad. we are looking at a recession. many people say the recession has already started. _ well, the bank of england said today that it has. and you've got interest| rates that are going up, which need to go up, .

so you're going to have monetary tightening, _ which is necessary when you've got the inflation at the rate - that it is now, but on the other hand you've got fiscal measures now that are helping businesses and helping the economy, - and the two will go hand—in—hand, and that's the way i see it going. the pound being really weak. i don't think a lot of people really appreciate, when you've got - the pound at its lowest level. in nearly four decades, at 1.13 — almost on parity with the dollar — that makes importing _ things more expensive. and we as a country are net importers. i so that makes things more i expensive for our consumers and our businesses. so we need to get the pound back up to 1.5, is what it should be _ at to the dollar, minimum. is this as bad as you have ever known it? yes, it is as bad as i've known it for a number of reasons. - one is because inflation... i've never known in my business career inflation running - into double digits. we've been used to low levels of inflation. - interest rates — since the financial crisis, we've been used _ to tiny interest rates. now they have gone up to over 2%.

that's still very low. average interest rates before that were 5%. i and the uncertainty is the worst| part of it, with this ukraine war, which is driving so much of this. we would have been settling down now i after the pandemic, but the ukraine i war has exacerbated things. we need that war to end, and the uncertainty- of when is the war going to end, i let alone all the scary threats made by putin, that uncertainty is underlying everything. i lord bilimoria, ijust want to ask you about one thing. you talked there about the benefit to business of the tax cuts that we expect the chancellor to announce on friday morning. you also mentioned smes, small and medium businesses. some of these tax cuts — corporation tax, national insurance — might not have a massive impact on small and medium businesses, particularly those who don't employ loads and loads of people. and i've been speaking to a lot over the course of the last couple of days — energy package aside, how else is this going to help me? i'm in really desperate need right now. i'm struggling to keep my head above water. and the idea of corporation tax cuts and national insurance cuts

won't have a huge impact. the idea of growth in the longer—term. i need something right now or else i'm going to go bust. you're absolutely right, _ which is why what we've been saying is, you've got to go further. in the pandemic, if you remember, iyou had business rates holidays. i you were able to delay your vat payments, you were able - to delay your tax payments to just help your cash flow. _ we had vat reduced at one stage to 5% for hospitality, _ then it went up to 12.5%. those are the things we still need. the government needs to do those sort of things. - business rates relief, - reducing vat temporarily to help the hospitalityl industry, for example. fuel... 0ur fuel duties are - the highest in the world. they can't keep cutting taxes because they have to pay for it, and we haven't got a clue yet how they're going to pay for most of this stuff, right? apart from — we're assuming — borrowing, which then might have an impact on markets and the economy in the longer—term. this is about making choices. in terms of borrowing, - after the second world war, which was the last major global crisis on this level _

that we have had, borrowing went up to 250% of gdp. - we are not even at. 100% at the moment. this is a time when needs must, this is a time where survival- is the most important thing. for individuals to bei able to eat and heat. | for businesses to be able to getj through this really tough period. we've got to do whatever it takes, because if you have businesses- going bust, if you have unemployment rising, that is going to be much - worse than borrowing - going up to help stave that. so you're pretty relaxed about borrowing? i've just come back from new york with the prime minister at the un general assembly and we were talking to her the other day at the top of the empire state building, actually, flipping heck, it's high up there, 102nd floor, and just as we were talking to liz truss and she was setting out her economic vision about cutting taxes, about firing up economic growth, there was a tweet, as if it was timed, i'm sure it had nothing to do with what liz truss was saying, because if you're american president, you've got plenty to be thinking about without thinking

about british politics, but president biden tweeted, talking about so—called trickle—down economics, this phrase occasionally used i guess particularly by people on the left, this critique of grow the pie big and everyone gets a bigger slice, even if the richest get a colossally big additional chunk to their bit of the pie, i wonder what your analysis is of this whole idea, this economic philosophy, if you like, that liz truss yes, whether you talk - about trickle—down economics or whether you talk about the laffer curve, which is the theory that - proves that when you reduce taxes, you actually generate growth... - you believe that that's right? and i believe that that's right. lots of people say it's not true. people had a debate, but historically... - ronald reagan used just this theory and it worked very well. _ so, it has been shown to be able to work in the past. _ and i think at a time like this, again, we've got to be bold. l there will be people - who criticise it, but i will say, what is the alternative? |the alternative is to keep taxes| at the highest level in 70 years?

i the alternative is for people to i suffer, for businesses to go bust? i'm sorry, i don't want to see that happening, i want growth, - i want a targeted growth, i want to create jobs. - natasha, i know you do the health bit of your newspaper, but it is called the economist, does the economist have a view about all the stuff that's happening this week? yeah, i think our view is that reaganomics in britain is a bit of a gamble, and, as you said, you agreed it was a gamble and... i didn't agree it was a gamble, i said it is a choice _ that one has to make. 0k, choice, gamble, i mean, the outcome is not certain. and we're certainly not thrilled by the strategy, let's just say that. i'll look forward to reading the economist leader on this. right, let's get into your specialism now, natasha, so, we got an announcement about the nhs from the new health secretary, therese coffey, today, who is super busy because she's also the deputy prime minister as well. before we get into what she was talking about today, what can you tell us thatjust sums up the problems facing

the nhs this winter? we know it's going to be bad. we know there are 13,000 people who are healthy but in beds, we need to get them out, that is one figure that stuck in my mind. and you know, there is a whole raft of problems to do with long waiting times for ambulances and, you know, to get appointments for elective care. almost 7 million people, actually, waiting for an elective care appointment i suppose is the biggest take—home message for me. that is a long, long queue. yep. so, therese coffey talks about the a, b, c, d, ds, doesn't she? so, ambulances, backlogs... social care, which is actually... and it's also an a. and then doctors and dentists, actually, the two ds are probably the easiest bit. what are some of the things she announced today? the useful things she's really talking about are really efforts on ambulances and bed blocking. and that's certainly

going to help over the winter. and so, she is talking about additional call handlers, she's talking about... 999 calls. that's right. and she's talking about about 500 million for helping people to get out of beds and into social care. and then something called virtual wards, they're going to use, which is where you're not discharged but you're sort of sent home with, like, a tag, like a sort of prison tag but a bit more sophisticated. and it monitors your well being, and they can monitor you from home. so, that sort of package of measures i think is certainly quite useful for dealing with some of the peak, acute demands that we are likely to see over the winter. but i sort of wasn't enamoured with a lot of the other stuff that was announced. take gp appointments, for example. we're going to use more community pharmacies to deliver prescriptions, to make prescriptions, we're going to allow gps to hire extra support staff, useful, very nice, but they're talking about 3 million extra appointments, and just to put that in context, the nhs has about 300 million gp appointments every year.

so... like a fraction. exactly, it's tinkering around the margins, it's not really going to help. the other aspect of this is, where are these doctors i and nurses coming from? we need more places at medical schools. . at the moment, i'm chancellor. of the university of birmingham, we have one of the biggest medical schools in the country, _ we need more medical schools, we need to train more doctors. and nurses over here. but also... couldn't agree with you more. ..we need to bring them in from abroad as well. i this is another little nutshell thing here, can you just explain to me in a nutshell why there are such constraints on the number of people that can go to medical school? it is all... it's artificial. well, is, it is also funding. it's expensive. it's very expensive, but again, to me, it's expensive, - but we need to invest in this, i for our future, for the security of our citizens we need to do it. i have a question for you, so, if we're going to get rid of this national insurance tax, which you're so happy about,

where is the money going to come from to support the increase in investment in the nhs, which is what that money was for, and for social care? yeah, that was £13 billion a year, wasn't it? so, this where is the money- going to come from question... where did the £400 million- that we spent to save businesses and the economy in the pandemic...? we borrowed it. borrowing. exactly. we can't keep borrowing to fund basic nhs care, that's ridiculous. that's the magic money tree we were told doesn't exist. and the government has i made the commitment that that funding remains, _ even though this has been reduced. and by the way, this whole argument of national insurance _ was meant to be ring—fenced, it is now one big pot. - there is a big argument, you talk about tax and national insurance, it is all one big pot. but there was going to be a health and social care levy, right, so that was the point, which was meant to be directed towards the nhs, and then ultimately, social care, although again, to advocate for those, there are plenty in the care sector that were worried that it would ever get to them in the first place, and now they're even more worried about where that funding is going to come from. and on the point ijust want to ask you, you mentioned the nhs, but you will know, correct me if i'm

wrong, but a lot of people are saying, actually, the route to tackling the nhs, and particularly the hospitals and ambulances issue, is to clear people into the care sector, and that's got massive staffing shortages as well, huge funding issues. massive. energy crisis, huge impact on local authorities as well as private care homes. the king's fund put out a number which was i think they said about 400,000 people in the care sector would be better paid if they worked in the supermarket. and that gives you just an idea of how desperate a situation it is in. this is really low paid work, it's really hard to get people into these jobs. i see jobs being advertised for care workers for £11.61 an hour. i mean, you can't get a babysitter for that in london these days. i mean, really, it's desperate. and this is a hard job, a really hard job. so, yeah, we're not paying what it needs to support the social care system, and without some kind of fundamental reassessment of that situation, i don't think we're going to get any long—term improvement. but can ijust say, look, i mean, the big issue that's

not being addressed, and this comes up again and again, and it's what we will be talking about the next time that you have me in to talk about the nhs, and that is that we don't have a workforce plan for the nhs. what that means is planning, as you say, running for how many gps are you going to train, how many nurses do you need? and the government can set as many targets as it once for bringing doctors into the nhs — we're losing them, how do we keep these people? you need to have a workforce plan. we also got a little insight into what it is like in a&e at the moment in certain parts of the country from the health secretary herself, who sounds like she had a bit of an accident in the summer. just injuly, i went to a&e, i waited nearly nine hours myself to see a doctor, and i still didn't get any treatment. i was asked to go back the next day, so i went to a different hospital just three miles away, and i was seen and treated appropriately. that's the sort of variation that we are seeing.

across the nhs, and it's why my approach... as we've onlyjust, last week, for example, from nhs digital, started getting some data about what is happening practice by practice. so, that raises a few things, not least about, i wonder what she did, did she stub her toe? did she not want to declare it? let's not dwell on the health secretary's actual health. but it does raise this issue of kind of access to things and how long you've got to wait, and the thing that was announced today is this new sort of not a target, but... expectation, i think was the word. that you will be seen by your gp within two weeks! i mean, i'm old enough to remember when it was two days, it was 48 hours. natasha, what's going on, is that a target, is that an aspiration? of course it's. .. it is an aspiration. and it's one of these meaningless things that politicians say to sort of sound good. one of the things that did occur to me, though, about the sort of plan is to have a sort of league table, of, like, which doctors' surgeries are the worst. you'll be able to see how long the queues are in your local... exactly. can you switch, if the capacity is there? isn't that the problem? well, you could... say, your local surgery was just really rubbish, and all the other surgeries locally were much better, you might choose,

you mightjust say, i will register with a different gp. so, it would at least give you a sort of illusion of control, perhaps. while we're talking about people's medical histories, i got my flu vaccine yesterday, and i got it from my local pharmacy, because ijust moved house. excellent. and they did it in the tiniest room, it was like a tiny cupboard, it was very, very intimate, and getting a jab is quite stressful as it is but when the guy is basically sat on your knee injecting you. . .! but chris, just with your bird's eye view of all of politics, what's the feeling in your waters...? i'm getting so medical today...! you really are! ..about how health is going to play out over the next few months, over the inevitable tough winter that natasha was talking about? so, when you speak to people at the top of government, i think they acknowledge privately that the nhs didn't really feature all that much in the discussion that took place between the two wannabe prime ministers, as they were, over the summer, and liz truss and her team wanted to kind of correct that in what they saw as their priorities in the early weeks, hence the announcement today. but in big picture terms, politically, bluntly,

success for them would be keeping the nhs off the front pages, off discussions on newscast and plenty of other programmes, because they know that if it's generating headlines, those headlines are bad, and they also know, picking up on the point about backlogs, that with stuff like backlogs and the time it takes to get a gp's appointment, if that continues to be really bad, that is politically really threatening for a government. well, they've already got a problem because natasha has invited herself back on already. laughter. i have absolutely, you are going to have me back. lord bilimoria, thank you very much for coming in. thank you very much, a great pleasure. - and natasha, thanks for coming again. thank you so much. see you again soon maybe! and that's all for this episode of newscast, i will be back with another episode of the podcast on bbc sounds, available on friday. and i'm going to be chatting to... dua lipa! dua lipa? at least you now who that is. i was going to say, do you know who that is, chris?

i'm amazed! you know it's not a politician? ido! is it a new lib dems mp, one of those by—elections? i do know who dua lipa is. films are a blank canvas for me, music, not so bad. and of course, we'll be talking about the mini budget, or whatever we've decided to call it by then. thanks for listening, bye. bye! hello. sunny spells and scattered showers covered it for most of us today, the exception the southeast corner, where cloud has been bringing outbreaks of rain. that band of rain is in no rush to clear, so we will see further pulses of wet weather across the southeast of england, perhaps fringing into east anglia at times as we go through the night. and here it is going to stay mild. further north, we will see clear

spells, just one or two showers. quite cold there across some parts of scotland. in fact, temperatures for some getting quite close to freezing. this little band of showers moving out of southeast scotland and down into northern england through tomorrow morning. some showers will pop up elsewhere, particularly across england and wales, not as many for northern ireland or scotland. still, this band of rain plaguing the southeast corner only clearing very slowly. it is going to feel quite cool, quite breezy as well. highs of 14—18 celsius. sunday, mainly dry, but with some rain in the northwest later. then the start of next week looks significantly colder than we have been used to lately.

stories to tell his grandchildren. he comes here after that loss against the danish fighter based in imprudent of more men to fight in ukraine. so—called referendums are under way in four regions of ukraine the russia controls. the alleys have condemned the move is a sham and a land grab by the kremlin. diplomats meet on the sidelines of the united nations, topping number one extensions over taiwan. flooding in pakistan, the foreign minister tells us his country is overwhelmed and even deeper in debt. more protests and around over the death of a young woman held by the morality police.

the us says it will ease internet