it this is bbc news. we'll have the headlines and all the main stories at the top of the hour, just after this programme. how is yourjet lag? i mean, you can't complain when you get to go on a trip, you know, reporting on the prime minister, to somewhere on the other side of the world. but... i'm jiggered. 0k. sleigh bells. now you will have missed, being in a not very christmasy place, the launch of the newscast christmas advert competition. oh, i have missed this. where we're getting people to suggest things that we could

put into the first ever newscast christmas advert, which will premiere in december. and we've had some suggestions from enid in cambridge and liz in london who both suggested a 12 days of christmas newscast mash up. this is what they came up with. 12 wines in a suitcase, 11% inflation, ten fewer binders, nine adam's quizzes, eight guest presenters, seven chris's travels, six fiscal statements, five oozing outros, four chancellors, three prime ministers, two sister podcasts, and a newscast in your pod feeds. oh, that's really good. as i was listening then i was thinking, how is this going to end over partridge in a pear tree to get that kind of rhythm 7 but that's just that is absolute genius, enid and liz. you can now get this podcast in your ears and eyes if you're watching. newscast. newscast from the bbc. hello. it's adam in the studio. and it's chris. barely capable of working out where i am, but i'm in the studio, too.

and it's one of those days where we've got loads of bits of papers, and booklets and post—it notes with numbers written on them. because we've had the autumn statement, which is the sequel to the mini budget, but we've got a new chancellor, a whole new load of policies. days like this, i think there's kind of like the big picture, and then there's, like, the hundred things that they announce that make up the big picture. why don't you do the big picture? so the big picture is we are less than eight weeks on from that mini budget that brought down liz truss and kwasi kwarteng, the then chancellor. and we've had this colossal about—turn that would be a colossal about—turn if you'd had a general election in between and the party of government had changed. and yet it's one conservative chancellor followed by another. and then the other striking thing is that we associate these moments, don't we, with at least in part kind of triumphalism on behalf of the person stood at the despatch box doing the thing. some rabbit comes out of the hat, something that gets all of their side cheering and the other side thinking, blimey, what do we do in response to that? there was kind of none of that today. it was somber, it was sober. even the response from

the opposition benches was pretty muted, really, because they know things are really grim for so many people and any outcome at the next general election will confront the next government, whatever complexion it has, with really difficult decisions and an inheritance of really tough times. and then you went and had a chat with the chancellor in a school, where it looks like you were sat on very small chairs. i'm not pretending these aren't going to be difficult times. but there's a plan, there's hope. and if we follow this plan, if we stick with it, we can get through to the other side, make the recession shallower than it might otherwise have been, and give hope to families that we can get back to more normality, more stability. and i think that's what people really want. in truth, though, you've ducked the difficult decisions, haven't you, until after the next election, when you might be gone? well, i've been accused of many things, but ducking difficult decisions... postponing some of them. well, a conservative chancellor standing up in the house

of commons and saying there are going to be £25 billion of tax increases. that is facing up to difficult decisions, but it's facing up to them in a balanced way. and the treasury does a handy little list of the 75 things they announced today and how much it costs or raises over the next few years. and adam is going to read them all out. not all of them. just some of them. but the short version is that this year they're going to be spending an extra £61; billion, lots of which is support for people's energy bills and some extra funding for schools and hospitals. but then, by 2027, so a few years after the next election, the government is hoping to be raising something like an extra £54 billion, and that will come from increasing people's taxes. but by freezing the rates at which you pay your tax or start paying different levels of tax, rather than increasing the rates of tax, and also spending less on government departments and stuff than the government was previously planning to at that point in the future. so that's kind of the basic shape of what's happened today.

and let's get some analysis of it with rachel reeves, who's the shadow chancellor who's here. hello. great to be here. thanks for coming again. ijust always wanted to know in these situations, have you written the speech basically in advance and you leave some little gaps for what the chancellor has announced ? because you don't have a long time. you have any time and you don't get any advance of the speech i or anything like that, - or you do, but the whole thing is redacted. so it says, thank you, mr speaker, i stand . here to deliver. and thenjust blacked, | blacked, blacked page. oh, well, i'm glad. we printed that out. so, yeah, of course. they blacked out the interesting bits. and at the end it says - i commend the statement to the house. so of course, you have to write your response | in advance, but you've got - lots of pages that you can then take out if they don't do something. - so i'm working out through, i well, have they said something on non—doms because we thought they might abolish the non—dom i tax status. there was some speculation about that. yeah, there was.

and so we had different - versions of what they might say and the same - of the windfall tax. and we thought they might just match what labour had done i with saying that we would get rid of the investment - allowances that enable some of the big energy companiesl to pay nothing in windfall tax. so you have different versions of bits of it and you've got - to make sure that you take out the right bits. - and so this is... i'm not sure if i should - announce this to newscast, but we have a little - whatsapp group of me and the shadow chief secretary, pat mcfadden and two people . in my office so that we're - on the front bench for that 50 minutes that the chancellor spoke, we'll get messagesl like delete line 167, take out page 12. l weirdly, that's how we make newscast as well. that's why me and chris are looking at our phones rather than you the whole time. isn't the truth that quite a lot of what you've spent the last few months arguing for, so a government that is offering a sort of stable picture, increasing all benefits and the state pension in line with inflation, massively increasing the windfall tax, they've done all of that.

you're in favour of all of that. that's not how i felt _ in the autumn statement today. i definitely felt that they could have shot some i of our foxes. all of those particular points you've argued for. up to a point, let's take - the windfall tax, for example. they did increase the rate at which it is paid today. and they extended iti by another two years. but we've said that it should have started in january this i year when those windfalls of war started to be felt. i we said that they shouldn't be getting investment allowances for investment that they would have been doing anyway, - which cancels the windfall tax for many of them. - and the rates should be paid a slightly higher rate. - so there's still billions - of pounds there on the table that could be used either- for deficit reduction or indeed for helping people with their bills. i and we heard today in - the autumn statement that from next april, people's gas and electricity bills _ are likely to be going| up by £800 or £900. that's going to be really challenging for people l who are already seeing higher

food prices, higher mortgagel payments, higher rents, - higher costs of petrol to get to work and now budgeting for £800 or £900 extra. i so that's why we've said - that the government should do more on the windfall tax. and also, and actuallyl this is something today which is so frustrating - in the autumn statement, the government said they're going to do more to retrofitl homes — starting in 2025. but we've got an emergency now with energy bills. - but we said over a year ago. that you could be retrofitting two million homes a year, i saving people up to £1,000 off their bills. and there's no time to waste. when you look at the government's sort of projections and what it's planning to do quite a lot as far as the spending squeeze is concerned, seems postponed until the other side of the election, when it's possible you might be the chancellor. do you interpret that as something of an attempted political hospital pass were that to come about and there is a change of government, change of party? i've never really known what a hospital pass is, but it doesn't sound very good.

well, i think it's a rugby thing, isn't it? and it's a pass that you end up catching. you don't really want? but getting walloped at the same time. i think that's what it is. so basically he's left you having to decide whether you as chancellor would slow growth in public spending in the same way? well, i know that because of. the mess that the tories have made of our economy, i that labour's inheritance, if we are to win the next election, is going to bel a difficult one and it does - mean that we're not going to be able to do everything - that we want to do as quickly as possible. but there are always - different choices to be made, and that's the argument that i was trying to - get across today. different choices on tax, - for example, on the non—doms, on the private equity, - on the bank surcharge, etc. but also, beyond that, you'vej got to have a plan for growth. there's nothing inevitable about where we are in - two years' time. i was saying to adam i just before we started, this year, we've had . three prime ministers, four chancellors l and four budgets. who knows, frankly, . where we're going to be by the next election? but it's not going to be rosy, is it? things aren't going to be rosy. not if things carry on like this. -

but if we had a proper plan for growing our economy. at the moment, the imf numbers, i the international monetary fund. numbers show that of the 38 advanced 0ecd economies, i over the next two years, we're forecast to have i the lowest growth. next year we're forecast i to have the lowest growth in the g7 and the highest inflation. things don't have to be like this. i there is a different l path that the country could be taking. and so let's see where - we are by the next election. but i have set out a set of fiscal rules that - an incoming labour- government will abide by. i've said there will be nothing in our manifesto that isn't - fully costed and fully funded, but even within those - constraints you could be making different choices on tax that - would ease some of the burden on ordinary working people - and mean that there is less - pressure on the public services that are being cut. well, i was just going to look at a few things that are in the blue book, which is the 0br document, which we got this time, which we didn't get last time. and so an analysis of the numbers. and it's so funny because the 0br press conference today, richard hughes, who's in charge of it, apologised for it only

being 68 pages. because normally it's about 200. more available online. yeah, there's loads of spreadsheets if you really want to see, if you want to stay up really late. so if you go to page a0 where they're talking about how much the government is going to be spending on debt interest, so the interest on its debt that it's borrowed in the last few years. it's going to hit about £100 billion a year in in kind of 2027—ish. when you look at that number, do you think, oh, there's something i can't do because i would be inheriting all that debt interest to pay. what it says to me is that - economic stability and security is just absolutely essential, | because you just mentioned the last fiscal statement, which was the liz truss, i kwasi kwarteng kamikaze budget just two months ago. _ and what happened in that mini i budget was government borrowing costs went up and borrowing costs for everybody else, . particularly if you've got - a mortgage, went up as well. now, since then, those costs have fallen back a bit, - but they've gone nowhere near. back to where they were before.

the thing that i really- want to do is to try and ensure that people in this country have got opportunities - to to work. what about income tax then? because the government has taken arguably some pretty difficult decisions today on income tax, the the ongoing freeze, this kind of ice age and what are known as the thresholds that people pay particular rates of income tax, depending on how much they earn, which over time drags more people into paying a higher rate or paying something at all. and then that increase for the very best paid as well. do you agree with all of that? what would you do about income tax? because you want to be seen as a government in waiting. so what would you do? well, it's a sign i of failure, isn't it? i mean, the reason - they are in this mess... well, i think it is important to look at why we are - in this situation. there is no other country that, heading into a recession rightl now, is increasing taxes - on working people and cutting public spending. we are an outlier globally now.

so if you were chancellor right now, what would you have done with the thresholds and what would you done with taxing the best paid? would you've done something different? i've set out some of the - changes that labour would make. for example, the bank- surcharge today was reduced from 8% to 3%. what about income tax? i'm giving examples. of different taxes that could be increased that. would ease some of that pressure on ordinary working people. - that would raise between £1—2 billion a year. - we wouldn't have gone ahead with the cut in stamp duty. i that would raise almost £2 billion a year. - if you are a private equity . manager and you are paying an effective tax rate lower - than ordinary working people, we would close that loophole. i take all those points, but i'm still interested about income tax, cos it's such a big thing for so many people. the government's decided to do some things today which are difficult from a chancellor's perspective, and ijust wonder, you want to be the chancellor, what would you have done? well, what i'm saying is we would ask those with the broadest shoulders to pay a bit more tax. well, that's what they're doing, isn't it? no, no, it's not what they're doing, they're not doing - the non—doms. they're not doing a proper... i'm talking about income tax. but what i'm saying - is you could raise money in a different way, raise money by taxing those i with the broadest shoulders,

rather thanjust coming - to those on average earnings. is it that you don't know what you would do about income tax, or you don't want to tell us? well, the next general election is probably not going to be - for two years, so i'm not. going to set out a manifesto for the next general election . now, because we may have four or eight more fiscal- statements before that, but i've given an example... i'm wondering what your instinct is on income tax. my instinct is that workingi people should not be faced with higher and higher taxes, i because those with the broadest shoulders should pay. more into the system. those are the different choices that an incoming labour- government would make. so the very highest earners might pay even more under labour. if you're a non—dom, you should be paying your taxes. _ talking about income tax. but, chris, the point is that you could raise taxes - in different ways. it doesn't all have to be through income tax. - you could tax the banks more, you could tax the private - equity bosses more, - you could tax the non—doms more, you could tax the big energy giants more. - and if you do that, you don't . have to keep coming to ordinary working people and putting all of the burden on them. | that is what the -

chancellor did today. you famously were a chess champion. do you think you could totally thrashjeremy hunt at chess, or do you think he's quite canny? i don't know what he's like at chess, but i'd l fancy my chances. i think you probably would beat him. i think, having seen you play chess on radio 2 a few months ago, when you were on thejeremy vine show... how do you watch somebody play chess on the radio? cos he was in the studio! cos i was going on next! it was a novel item, but it was very, very much in keeping withjeremy vine�*s kind of approach to stuff — chess on the radio, why not? why not? and given your pedigree as a, you know, school champion and all of that, i mean, as i say, i have no idea aboutjeremy hunt's chess pedigree, but i'd put my money on you beating him, i reckon, at chess. well, certainly playing chess has encouraged me to look. a few moves ahead. and, you know, the next. election may be a way off, but i hope today you get i an idea about the strategy going into the next election. fairer choices in tax and a proper plan. i you might have noticed this while all the autumn statement stuff was happening in parliament, there was a big

announcement outside parliament, which is that neighbours is coming back, having briefly been cancelled. are you a neighbours fan? does that news excite you? well, you might havej heard in my response to the autumn statement today that i'm a bit of a dallas fan! i with my reference to bobby ewing and an old charactersj turning up and plots that unravel. - and my mum texted me - after the autumn statement today, obviously to say, "what a great job you did," and i said, - "i just want to say, mum, i thanks for letting me stay up to watch dallas! " and she said, "i am- a good mum, aren't i?!" i said, "you absolutely are." so it was those those years in the '80s, staying up- to watch dallas, that - gave me one of my lines. you and me both! this is the thing with politicians, we ask a question about neighbours and we get an answer about dallas! i remember scott and - charlene getting married. what's your dallas equivalent now? like, a show you watch now that you love? or do you not have time?

i don't have that much time for watching telly at the moment. my favourite, well, actually, let's come back to chess, i then, the queen's gambit. i did really enjoy - the queen's gambit. chess wasn't quite as glamorous when i was playing it _ in the '80s and '90s, i but i did enjoy watching a strong woman beat the men at chess. i that was great. well, thanks for coming in, i know you've got nine million other interviews to do, so i'll let you go and do them, thank you. thanks very much. cheers. ok, let's delve into even more detail now with our next guests. we have got maths genius and maths teacher bobby seagull. hello. and presenter of money box live, that's money — space — box, as we've just been discovering, adam shaw, hello. hello! bobby, were you teaching your pupils about the autumn statement today? because it was happening in real time. yes, i may have been in period five and six at the end of the day, we were having a lesson actually on currency conversion, so i thought it's a good opportunity to explain what can impact the value of gbp, sterling. so my students, year eight, they're getting quite engaged. at first they were like, i thought the eyes were glazing over. . . your lessons sound full—on!

yeah, it was, it was quite an important one. how did you make it compelling to them, then? i think i told them about the value of the money in their pocket. isaid, "0h, christmas is coming up, you want to buy, you know, your xboxes, playstations, whatever you want to buy. what the chancellor says impacts that, especially if they're being imported from the us and the us dollar, they need to be, you know, wary of values. one of the surprises today was more money for schools in the next couple of years. what do you think about that? so i would be very curmudgeonly to say, "oh, god, more money for schools, bad thing." of course it's a good thing. i think it's 2.3 billion extra over the next two years. but the sort of bigger picture is, from 2010 to 2020, there was, in terms of per spending per pupil in england, i think a 9% cut in real terms. so, of course, i am grateful, and i hope that this government continues to acknowledge how important education is, because that is the real big leveller. so hopefully it'sjust the start, because we've got ten years of catching up to do, i think. adam, i'm so impressed with your binder that

you've got there. oh, sorry. no, no, no, ilove a good binder. we can talk binders afterwards. same name, same passions. what's the most interesting...? what's in my binder? exactly! it's a new slot — - what's in adam's binder? that's already been done! to death, some might say! no, butjust give me some interesting things you spotted that maybe the rest of us haven't quite clocked in the hurly burly. there's obviously been - a huge amount of coverage, so in a sense, you can find that everywhere. | i think one of the interesting things was the chancellor. is sort of playing a trick. i don't mean that sort- of disparagingly, but there is a trick to what he's doing in that it's one speech — - two messages for two i very distinct audiences. so i think at the very top, i he talks about what's getting cut, and then if you listenj to the rest of it, it sounds like he's splurgingl money everywhere. so that's the political part of this. - and then almost, in - a shakespearean aside,

he goes, yeah, yeah, but listen, markets, i i'm cutting like crazy, i'm cutting like crazy. j oh, and then to everyone else, no, no, no, that's. loads of money! and of course both i are true, in a sense. so that's interesting that he does that, and important. l | but i think also, stepping backj from this, from the hurly burly of today's announcements, i if you just look at government spending, nominal government spending, it's going crazy — - it's really, really high. and although we're seeing big cuts today, this takes us back| two years, three years to what governments. were spending two| or three years ago. so this is still big _ government, and i think apart from what we're seeing today, it links into some very large i questions about what we want from government. i and i think those startedi in covid when you sort of, you know, in the '70s, - it was keynesian economics, it was spend, keynes - was santa claus, and then sort of, you know, keynesian- economics became like scrooge. "no, no, that's not. the way of doing it." and monetarism became the new orthodoxy — - so much we don't even talk about it, it's just l the way it's done. and then suddenly covid came along, and you saw maybe -

there is a role for big - intervention, big spending. and that might have marked a change, and i think what's| really interesting, - and what will be interesting is our appetite as a nation, | the public's appetite to say, what do we want from government, a sort ofi existential question, and are we preparedi to pay for it? that's the kind of big picture, isn't it, in terms of the state of the economy and how people react, as you say, to whether they want bigger or smaller government? a couple of things just to ask you about, adam. one is recession, the r word used by the chancellor today. the other, living standards, that suggestion that the fall in living standards greater than at any point since the 1950s. and itjust struck me that whatever else we take away from all of these bits of paper and booklets and ring binders, that kind ofjust shapes the political conversation for the next two years, because that's what people are thinking. the actual stat from the office of budget responsibility is that household disposable income, so how much money people have to spend, will fall by 7% over

the next two years. and that has hardly ever happened, if at all. i sort of object to the word i "recession", because actually it has a technical definitionj of two quarters of negative growth or contraction, right? it'sjust arbitrary. i mean, if you talk- to people, it's like a line. "oh, i'm not in recession." "now i've stepped over this line, i'm now in recession." why i object to it is- because it doesn't reflect the experiences i of ordinary people. people don't wake up l tomorrow and go, "0h, i feel terrible, - we're in recession." recession is more like an upward hill that - you are walking. those who lose theirjobs between now and whatever might think that. well, yes, but you may- lose yourjob, but that's not because there's - a switch that goes... the way we as journalists talk about it, and politicians- and indeed economists talk about it, is like . there's a switch. you're not in recession, you are in recession. i and why i object to that is

because i don't think it. actually reflects the lived experiences of anybody. i it doesn't really work like that. i so you may lose yourjob, i but that's the top of this very steep hill you've got to. and i think it's much more interesting, important- and relevant to talk- about the steepness of that hill — whether you are in recession or not. i bobby? mathematically, if you think of recession as a normal distribution, so in the middle part is, yeah, that is the economy shrinking. but if you look at the people in the bottom 10, 20%, they're being impacted much more by, again, the cost of living crisis. again today, one of the measures was the freeze in the threshold allowance, and i was thinking, actually, i'm a fan of a rupaul's drag race, and i think the chancellor's new name will be fiscal drag, because, you know, at 12,500, he's frozen that threshold he's frozen that threshold couple of years, and that's going to impact a lot of my students, a lot of my families that i teach. they'll suddenly be paying income tax. exactly, yeah. so you can bandy the word "recession", but actually, whatever the reality is, it's going to impact them much more, people in the middle. and actually somebody who'd never consider themselves a 40p ratepayer might in the next

couple of years suddenly become one, but at the same time go, "but i don't feel like a wealthy person who should be paying this 40p rate," because that's the reality of fiscal drag. there was some interesting data done by the british attitudes - survey. because if i'm outside saying, "oh, i'm expecting it's going to be a cold day, i'm going to wear my scarf and hat," it's not going to change the weather. i can get my umbrella, i can start doing a sun dance. but with the economy, if we're overly pessimistic, or overly optimistic, actually, that feeds into our spending and saving habits, so actually what we say, our words really have power. and that's the fascinating thing, isn't it? because this is where the numbers collide with or interact with sentiment, that sense of either what you've expected versus what's happening,

or the reality versus what you want. and so much of these tax rises are, yeah, the freezing of the threshold, so things you're sort of not meant to even really notice, and quite a lot of them are quite a long way in the future. and then you look at them in the overall context of all the financial decisions made today, and actually the tax raising things seem quite actually quite small compared to all the attention that we give them in the news. yeah, i mean, ithink— there was some debate before... i was going to call it- the budget, the autumn statement, i should say, j that actually the markets wouldn't want it all to happen today, and that they'd sort i of make some announcements. but i think the markets reacted fairly well to this, _ and when i used to do. the budget programme, it was a nightmare programme to do, because the chancellorl would, you know, fire i off a thousand numbers. and i was desperately writing them down, thinking i'm- about to report this... and that was gordon brown, who was famous for firing them off very quickly! yes, very quickly, i'd go, "what was the debt?" i and i'd call evan davis, "did you get that?" - "i'm not entirely sure, i'm about to say this!" and that was pre—whatsapp. yes, it was, it was _ the telephone, the telephone. right, adam and bobby, thank you very much. pleasure. thank you. and that's all for this episode of newscast.

thank you very much for listening to us. subscribe to newscast on bbc sounds so you don't miss an episode. the next one is going to be a preview of the world cup. we will find out what it's really like for england and wales fans. your specialist subject! and we will launch the bbc news world cup sweepsta ke. big names, big teams. what's going to happen? bye! hello. our very unsettled spell of november weather is set to continue for some of us, particularly towards the north and east. there's some fairly heavy rain in the forecast over the next 2a hours or so. further south and towards the southwest, things are tending to dry out through the day on friday,

so it's going to be a day of mixed fortunes. let's look at the expected rainfall accumulation over the next 2a hours. not much for southern england, wales, northern ireland, but take a look at scotland — this green zone here — that is where we're going to see the heaviest and most persistent rainfall. in fact, the met office have issued an amber warning for heavy rain in eastern scotland, particularly for aberdeenshire, angus, perth and kinross, as well. could be up to 150 mm perhaps over the cairngorms, certainly enough to cause some flooding issues. so, we've had this low pressure drifting its way northwards overnight, continuing to bring all of this heavy rainfall. through the early hours of friday morning, still a pretty soggy scene in the north and east of scotland. most of us frost—free to start the day — we could just see a touch of frost, though, earlier on across northern ireland. through the day on friday then, there's that persistent rain driven in by these easterly winds across parts of scotland, drifting its way westwards. elsewhere, a few showers around, but they're tending to peter out through the day. best of the sunshine for parts of southern england, wales, perhaps into northern ireland later in the day. it's not quite as warm as it has been — temperatures generally around nine to 12.

then, overnight into saturday, we've got more cloud and rain sitting in the east, so overnight temperatures by saturday morning around about four to six, but further west, we're looking at a touch of frost for parts of northern ireland, into western wales, for instance, as well. but through the day on saturday, the next front will move its way in from the west. we've still got that front in the east as well, so something of a frontal sandwich, i think. we've got cloud and patchy rain moving in from the east, another area of cloud and rain from the west, and in between, there will be some sunshine and some drier weather on the cards. it's going to be a little cooler than it has done recently, with temperatures generally only around seven to nine around that east coast, perhaps up to around 12 down towards the southwest. it looks like the front in the west winds out as we head into sunday. it pushes its way east across the uk and it's followed by scattered showers. so, early on, perhaps a band of persistent rain, slowly clearing eastwards, some heavy, potentially thundery showers and turning colder — could even be a little bit of snow on top of the mountains in scotland.

top temperatures by this stage around six to 11 degrees. bye for now.

you're watching bbc news — i'm rich preston. our top stories: investigators uncover evidence of mass graves and other atrocities allegedly committed by russian soldiers in the kherson region of ukraine. relatives of the 298 people on board the malaysian airliner shot down over ukraine in 2014 give their reaction to the life sentences handed down to three men convicted of murder. when you look at the world, all these tragedies happen, but this one was part of me, part of my life, and it'll stay there forever. families facing higher taxes and further spending cuts — the uk's finance minister unveils plans to bolster an economy he says is already in recession. and the end of an era

in american politics. nancy pelosi says she won't seek re—election to lead