was addressed to just based on the sound properties of the call itself. and then we found that when we played those calls back to the elephants, they would respond more strongly to a call that was originally addressed to them than to a call from the same caller that was originally addressed to someone else. so that meant that not only do the calls have some properties in them that identify the intended recipient, like a name, but the elephants can perceive this and they can tell if a call was meant for them just by hearing that call. and now, it's time for newscast on the bbc. hello. i just want to start today's episode with a heartfelt apology. i won't say fulsome, because, as laura and paddy discussed in a previous episode of newscast, that word is misused all the time. but on the previous episode of newscast, i said that robert peel, the prime minister in 183a who published the tamworth manifesto, that his home has now been turned into a theme park.

and i said it was chessington world of adventures. i had misremembered my theme parks. it's actually drayton manor. i am happy to correct the record and i am happy to apologise to all theme park fans who pointed this out. hopefully that ends the matter. on happier news, lots of newscasters got in touch when chris and i spectacularly failed to come up with a name for this week when we're getting loads of party manifestos published one after the other, but plenty of newscasters jumped into the breach to save us. nick, who describes himself as an addicted listener, said, "how about the newscast manifestival?" and he then goes the extra mile and says, "you could decorate the studio with relevant party—coloured bunting." thenjohn, who says, "great show." thank you, john said, "with festival season approaching," sensing a little theme here, "how about you call it the manifestonbury?" love it, or festonbury. and then he goes the extra mile too

and says, "you could have a different party headlining the main stage each day." well, john, we're kind of are doing that because today saw the launch of the conservative party manifesto, which i will discuss with the gang on this very episode of newscast. newscast from the bbc. hello, it's adam in the studio. and for this extensive investigation into the conservative party manifesto. why are you laughing, faisal? is that an economics editor laugh? i'm excited. 0k. and also nick watt from newsnight�*s here as well. hello, nick. hello. are you enjoying all your extra viewers, by the way, from your new look show? well, we are no, absolutely. and we have our leading presenter here, faisal islam. he does friday. i wouldn't say leading. my leading... i think faisal sort of raises the sort of the intellectual level of the programme, i think _ 0k, 0k. i mean, ifeel like a pygmy compared to both of you. and at some point, chris mason will bejoining us from silverstone,

where the conservatives launched their manifesto on tuesday morning. let's have a quick pit stop. buh—bum. yeah, let's see how many formula onejokes... this is like a rishi sunak manifesto speech already. nick, do you want to just kind of paint the picture of the scene because you were there, too? well, the scene was at the silverstone racetrack, which i have never been to before. and you have these sort of incredibly smart buildings on either side of the racetrack. one is a hotel, the other one is like a conference centre. we had to walk across this bridge over the racetrack, which was like very exciting because i'd never done that. especially because brad pitt was filming a formula one film there. and brad pitt was filming, and every so often you'd sort of be sitting there, and particularly whilst we had a briefing afterwards and you hear... he make whizzy noises. cars obviously moving very, very quickly for the brad pitt film. nick, i'm afraid you're not going to be overtaken by chris mason, who's still there. hello, chris. who's moving fast. yes, hello. no, i am moving fast. we're in the slow lane, actually. of the, what is this road we're on? we're on the a43.

we're just left silverstone. i did like nicky or- your motor racing car kind of noise there. nick whizzes. chris whizzes. that was it was really good. it's unbelievably loud, isn't it? it is very loud. it really. all right. surrounded by petrolheads. this is like listening to greg james�*s formula one podcast, which is very good, if you like, that sort of thing. but chris, so pick up the baton from nick. he was explaining the layout just then, give us the kind of the optics. well, yeah. i mean, the optics were that i if you didn't know that it was at silverstone with our motor racing sound effects, you wouldn't - know it was there. because of mr pitt and his film number out on the track, - there wasn't anything in the kind | of visit from the prime ministerl and the cabinet that would have said that they were at the home of, - you know, british motorsport. it could have been a conference room, you know, a stone's - throw from parliament, - to be honest, with the kind of backdrop that gets carted around the country kind of everywhere. - so, no, it was a big kind| of airy conference room. it had a fair chunk of cabinet ministers in, but not all. - and then a smattering.

of conservative activists. not all that many conservative candidates beyond those in - the cabinet who are standing again. various folk were saying to me that, you know, that becomes a election. expense and also it's a time away. from knocking on doors and the kind of pavement politics . of trying to win a seat. but, you know, it had. that sense of occasion. | there was a the sort of regulatoryl snazzy video at the start of slo—mo pictures of rishi sunak getting off i a bus and all that kind of stuff. i - but i'll tell you what i noticed - and we perhaps get into this in more detail later on on newscast, but i noticed in that snazzy. video at the beginning. and in the, an undertone of what conservatives - and the prime minister down are now saying publicly, - as well as musing about privately, is that tacit acknowledgement of the possibility of— the likelihood of defeat. the idea that maximising the conservative vote - is about minimizing labour's win - rather than preventing labour's win. now of course conservatives are saying, you know, -

they're going all out for every vote and they'd love to win, _ etcetera, etcetera. but it'sjust interesting hearing that that slight tilt both - in their online advertising - that is warning as they see it, of the dangers of a big labour majority or very shriveled - conservative party, but alsojust in the way that they frame some of their arguments with, - you know, what, three weeks down almost and three and a bit weeks to go. | well, the way rishi sunak did that was talking about keir starmer�*s pledge to reduce the voting age to 16. so 16 and i7—year—olds can vote. and rishi sunak said, "oh, that's a way of almost manipulating the electoral system so labour could stay in power for even longer than they might do under the current electoral system." and he also did that thing that he started doing, but not really leant into, which is sort of apologising a bit for the last 14 years. this is how he did it. i'm not blind to the fact that people are frustrated with our party and frustrated with me. things have not always been easy and we have not got everything right. but we are the only party in this election with the big ideas to make our country a better place to live.

applause. less an apology, more an acknowledgement. chris, i don't know how long we've got you, but do you want to just pick out one thing from the manifesto that you think is a really big thing to talk about? so for me, it's sort of two things that underline to me _ that this is, you know, - it's rishi sunak's manifesto. it's kind of sunakian _ conservatism in 70—odd pages. so the kind of controlling thought | of the whole thing is this dividingj line that the conservatives are attempting to paint. between themselves and labour when it comes to an instinct - for tax cuts. and the kind of case study of that was the national insurance cuts, i in particular that desire _ to eradicate self—employed national insurance within the next - parliament, and also the stuff on stamp duty. but there wasn't anything there i on income tax or inheritance tax. and then on small boats on rwanda that desire to deliver _ the war under scheme, - but not to withdraw from the

european convention on human rights. and so, you know, you've got those who are supportive - of rishi sunak who say, | "look, this is very much in his image," as they see it. "it's pragmatic, it's thought through, it's deliverable." i and then you speak privately to some other conservatives who are pretty. critical of rishi sunak, _ and they say, "it had to be bolder, it has to be more game—changing because game—changing - is what is needed for— the conservatives at this stage," even if that would actually make any difference. - so for me, it was that sense that. yeah, it felt very much in his image and that's not a particularly original thing to say - because of course it's in his image as the party leader. _ but i think you could see that quite strikingly, - both on tax and on the whole raging | issue and question of small boats, i illegal migration, asylum| seekers and what you do. although talking of images in the manifesto, there are no pictures at all and there are no pictures of rishi sunak in it.

unlike the last conservative manifesto in 2019, which i think had something like 27 pictures of boris johnson. anyway, nick, you've got a copy in front of you. let's just zoom in on what chris was talking about the, personal tax measures there. so there are kind of two, one of which we knew in advance, which was this pledge to continue cutting the rate of employee national insurance. so over the next two years of a conservative government, that would go down by another two percentage points. so repeating what they've just done over the last year, but also the surprise and i hate to say that cliche, the rabbit out of the hat was abolishing national insurance contributions entirely for people who are self—employed. so if you're like, i don't know, a plumber or a cabbie or a tv presenter working for multiple different channels. yes. no, you're right. we didn't know that was coming. and it's exactly the precise opposite of what philip hammond once did, which i think he wanted to increase national insurance on the self—employed, did it in a budget and had to do a quick reverse ferret, because that went down like a lead balloon, i think... yeah, cos just after he announced it, laura was on tv and said, you know, this breaches the conservative manifesto. and that was what he first when he first realised he couldn't do it.

yeah. i mean i think it's one little wrinkle on that, which is i think the abolition of national insurance for the self—employed, i think doesn't apply to profits over £50,000, but it will essentially apply, i think the manifesto is saying, to 93% of self—employed people. so, yes, those are in a sense, the two big things. and by removing or taking another 2p off the employee national insurance rate, what that will allow the tories to say if they win the election is that taking it as the third of three cuts. that would mean that you would be halving that rate and that takes them along their ambition, ultimately, to completely get rid of national insurance because they say that that is a tax on work. jeremy hunt sort of announced that in the last fiscal event and you sort of said, "has he really said he wants to get

rid of national insurance?" because as faisal will be able to say, will be able to tell us, the three big tax revenue measures are income tax, vat and national insurance. and since then the labour party have been saying that would create a £46 billion black hole that will threaten the state pension, to which the conservatives say, "this is an aspiration, we'd like to do it, but we'll only do it when it's sensible to do it." and also the abolition of the self—employed rate, they would taper it down over the whole length of the next parliament and it would only actually have gone by april 2029. so it wouldn't be an instant thing. yes, faisal, that brings us to the numbers, because, of course, a tax cut when it comes to the public finances is well, is the government losing money it was expecting to get in future years. and you have to make up that that black hole somehow, either by spending less on something else or borrowing or raising another tax. so the size of this manifesto in terms of the tax and spend measures is a bit like a sort of medium—sized budget. we've had bigger before, 20 billion on taxes and giveaways and takeaways. and what you have is very certain tax giveaways.

the £10 billion a year by the end of the parliament on employee national insurance and about two and a half billion on pensions, on self—employed, and, and it adds up to 17 billion. and then on the other side of the ledger to fund that because they are keen to show their abacus. the conservative�*s, because unlike liz truss of course who didn't like abacus, abaci... mulitple abacuses, ok. it's quite striking, it's just two line items. it's like welfare savings, 12 billion, crackdown on tax avoidance, 6 billion. and the quality of the numbers on each side of that ledger is, i think, fair to say, slightly different. on the one hand, you have very certain tax giveaways for which i could name to for voters whether they were going to win or lose from that. on the other side, we're not saying that you could not get 12 billion in welfare savings. they set out a sort of strategy,

perhaps a narrative for doing that, but they don't set out a plan. they don't set out exactly the policies. they say, "do you know what, this is growing for working age benefits. it's growing from like 49 million to 69 billion, up to 79 billion. we just won't let it grow." ok, well, who's going to lose out? so that's not impossible. but it's somewhat less certain. so you and in general terms, what's happening here is the conservatives are trying to get voters to trust that the tory brand will shrink the state, will shrink welfare and create space for those tax cuts. and let's hear how rishi sunak put it at the race track. we are cutting taxes for workers, for parents and pensioners, - and we are the party| of margaret thatcher and nigel lawson, a party. unlike labour, that believes in sound money. so today's plans and you would. expect nothing less from jeremy and me are fully funded.

we will pay for permanent reductions in taxation by controlling _ the unsustainable rise - in working—age welfare that has taken off since the pandemic. and chris, rachel reeves, the shadow chancellor, did a press conference this afternoon where she zoomed in on quite a lot of those measures that the government say they could save from the welfare bill. but there is now a bit of a battle as faisal was laying out there about whether those savings are real and therefore whether they can be used to fund the tax cuts that were promised today. oh, chris is gone. never mind. he's obviously got a better offer. why don't i put the same question to you, nick? yes. it's now a battle. yes, that's right. i mean, it's interesting that in a sense, rachel reeves is sort of handing the battle back to the conservatives. and essentially what she's saying is, "you're making out that we are fiscally irresponsible and we are going to be blamed your claiming for a £2,000 tax rise. well, hey, if we're talking about fiscal irresponsibility, how about you, because your sums don't add up.

so one of the things that rachel reeves noticed is she's claiming that one of the main ideas for rishi sunak is this so—called national service. and 10% of the people who do that would do the military. and she's saying that they haven't identified the actual spending of equipment, which sort of would massively increase that. so rachel reeves is essentially saying, you know, you want to have a battle on fiscal irresponsibility? i'm very happy to meet you on that. but it's interesting that rishi sunak was saying that, saying that, look, we've got these tax cuts and we've got them fully costed. and picking up on what faisal was saying is that, as he was saying, that one of the ideas is 12 billion in welfare savings, but they haven't wholly identified how they're going to do it. literally what they're saying is that if you got welfare spending back to where it was before the pandemic and obviously welfare spending went up after the pandemic, if you did that, that would cost

you £34 billion less a year. and then what they're saying is, "so it's perfectly reasonable to assume that you could cut it by 12 billion." now, that is not some here's a progress here. year one, year two, year three, we're going to get it to this. it's literally, "well, if we got it back to pre—pandemic, it'd £34 billion less so 12 billion out of that, that's a pretty good assumption." and faisal, one of rachel reeves�*s other claims is that there's £6 billion that can be raised from clamping down on tax avoidance that lots of the parties are claiming and then spending on various things. she says, "actually, you need to spend 900 million to get it back." so actually you're only getting 5.1 billion. yeah, yeah. because you need to invest in basically more tax authorities, some sort of, probably this lot, ai. it is the case, though that there was some similar scepticism in 2015 about the same number. and it might be that some of the same voices behind that 2015 promise from the conservatives ahead of that, when they

were in the majority. there was some similar scepticism about the 12 billion welfare savings. and eventually, although after a couple of years, they did deliver on those 12 billion in welfare savings. so it is possible to save that much from the welfare bill. it is possible. or it was then. but i think, you know, what's ourjob? what ourjob here? everyone�*s claiming they can do stuff. literally rachel reeves says, no, it's zero that number. they would be arguing that we should say that that's zero. the conservatives say that they can get 12 billion. and when we can tell our viewers, listeners, you're going to be affected by that cut to welfare, right? then it's more certain, then it's more real. then there's a choice. i can tell them you're going to benefit from this employee nics cuts, you're going to benefit from the triple lock plus. that's certain. you get a certain amount of credit for that, as it were, electorally. it creates some capital. on the other side, its general. we can't identify, if you like, the losers people that lose out,

so you can't balance it out. so, yeah, there is this... but it's not to say they can't do it. of course it's possible, but it would, you know, either they're assuming thatjust there isn't a permanent change to how the working population has behaved post—pandemic. and i think there's a lot of people would say that there is a permanent change. now, is that's something that government should accommodate or is it something they should lean back on. what they're saying the conservative economics team is well, is the labour party now saying it just simply accept that the welfare bill is going to go up and up and up and up and up, we're going to take control. and this is where the issue of credibility comes in, credibility about whether you're a tax cutter and they say you can just trust us from years gone by. now, of course, that's not the case

over the past five years, there were quite clearly tax raises over the past five years. but can you trust them...? unless, as we heard yesterday from the prime minister, when he's saying to nick robinson, you're a middle—earner where you actually are paying less tax. the effective tax rate that is. yes. so that's the effect of personal income tax rate. but then you get into some really quite interesting economics about whether the overall tax burden — who does it eventually end up? so the corporate tax rate and all that sort of stuff. so that's why we use different... and the figure on that, isn't it, rishi sunak was saying, is that the effect of their measures was will be the overall tax burden will be 1% less than projected in the march fiscal event, but it's still higher than it was. yeah, chris, i know you got to go soon, but we got you back for a couple of minutes. let's move on to other things. i noticed the sort of the first and second things that rishi sunak talked about in his speech was actually defence spending and cutting down on illegal and legal migration. those were the things he really wanted to highlight. yeah. hello. nice to be back. i think the bicester black hole, |i'm going to christen the little| black spot that we just headed into on the m40. _

james landale, our colleague, spotted a little kink, _ a little twist on the whole defence spending thing and i've got- the let me try and invest - from underneath my collection of cables in the passenger seat of our election battle van... . oh, he's back in the bicester black hole. i think he's going to talk about the r&d... ..because this is the idea. 0h, have you lost me? oh, he's back. no, you're back. you're back. i'm back. this is a joy, isn't it? yeah, defence spending... oh, he's gone. we need to spend more money on getting... we should get one of those big old brick satellite phones. bicester's an interesting constituency, too. it's be a good live. and you can see all the candidates in that constituency on the bbc news website. anyway, no, he was going to i think he was going make the point that james landale spotted in the manifesto. there's two different versions of the pledge to spend 2.5% of gdp on defence. one is, "in 2030" and one is, "by 2030." wow. we're getting back to "a customs union" and "the customs union". no, happy memories for some of us.

0k. but you were going to make a different point. i was going to make a different point. actually, it passed me by at the time, which is when they made the defence. so it's going to cost 6 billion a year. that's a hefty... and we should say this is the target that all nato's members are supposed to be spending on their defence. and so 4 billion of that comes from tens of thousands fewer civil servants. that's, i mean, that's a...that�*s a big that's a big hit. again, they're making this argument. it's an interesting argument, which is the state grew because of the pandemic and now we should go back to what it was before the pandemic. you know, that's the argument. you know, some voters may buy into that. it hasn't fundamentally changed. the other thing was a a switch of the research and development spending of 2 billion. so this is this would have counted as the government's r&d target. and they've just said, ok, we'll just spend that as part of the defence. so maybe that could have been spent on al or a new class of antibiotics? yes. but i mean, there's a lot of defence related like crossover with industry. but to the extent that that was,

say, for health or for, i don't know, flying cars or something like that, i guess they'd be useful military though as well. chris mason. you know, i've been in a flying car, but that's another that's another story. so they've just moved it over to the defence budget. but that suggests to me that the r&d budget will be less. a nerdy point. but, you know, there's a lot of accounting kind of like shuffling around. that's why it's interesting when you're opening remarks on this episode, we're like, "this is the size of like a medium—sized budget." and it does seem very familiar to me because we're doing a whole, going through the spreadsheets, making the sums, that it does feel very budgetary. that's what we do on the afternoon of budget. it does. but i think the key thing here is credibility. do they have the credibility to say to the public, "we're going to cut your taxes," and people are going to say, "yeah, they are, great." and now, nick, you're looking you're looking at the costings document which is the spreadsheet. ok, here we go.

here's the manifesto. yeah, this is the costings document which if it was a budget would be a very thick red book. here's the costings document. it looks quite red booky, but six pages not very long. and oh, the welfare reform and tackling the tax gap, that doesn't seem to be absolutely massive. it's the first time i've seen the document. i'm just staring it from across. are there any pictures of the prime minister? normally you get a picture of the prime minister. that's the red book. faisal, were you not? i told you there were no pictures of the prime minister. were there no pictures of the pm at all? i assumed that there was one. thanks for zoning out during my part. i was fully zoned in! i was concentrating on the very serious points he's making. that is actually extraordinary, isn't it? and, sorry, can i...? what was the point of the silverstone thing? what was he trying to...what was he trying to...? what message was he trying to send? so he could say he was in the same place as brad pitt. and also he said that formula one is a big british export and that seven out of the ten formula one teams are based here. he's talking about life in the fast lane. i mean, you know. yeah, we haven't had a formula one

pun for about four minutes. ok, right, nick, now, i, isort of, my heart sank when i saw you reaching for this spreadsheet of the numbers because i actually wanted you to talk about something else in this section of the podcast, which is the european convention on human rights. yes. there is a small paragraph in here on this manifesto about what the government would do if the european court of human rights — which is product of the european convention on the council of europe — stops the government doing what it wants to do to clamp down on legal migration. that's right. while you flick through it. just paraphrase. i'm going to do it off the top of my head. and what they say is, what rishi sunak says what this manifesto says is, the absolute priority is to securing, protecting and upholding the uk's borders. and if being a member of the european court of human rights puts that at jeopardy, they will put protection of our borders first. in other words, holding out the possibility that were we to need to withdraw from the european court of human rights to protect our borders, we would do that.

but it doesn't actually say that they would do that. now, there are a number of conservatives, suella braverman, robertjenrick, people like that, and indeed some people in the cabinet are saying just go the whole way and make clear we're out. but rishi sunak isn't going to do that. i was asking james cleverly, the home secretary, about this, and i was making the point to him, you know, you're not specifically saying how many flights will be when they'll be. you're not pulling out of the echr. why not? aren't you pulling your punches? he said, no, we are committed we are committed to the flights and we think we think that we can remain in the echr and protect our borders. but there is that sort of warning in the manifesto that they have that in reserve. and that is all for this episode of newscast. we recorded some extra material which you can hear on the podcast, which is available on bbc sounds or wherever you get your podcasts. and we will be back with another episode very soon. bye. newscast from the bbc.

hello there. it's felt quite pleasant in any strong june sunshine. but generally temperatures have been below par for this time of year and wednesday looks pretty similar to the last few days. some spells of sunshine, variable cloud and further showers mostly across eastern areas. i think there'll be fewer showers around on wednesday because this is a ridge of high pressure, will tend to kill the showers off. the winds will be lighter, but we're still got that blue hue, that cold arctic air hanging around for at least one more day before something milder starts to push in off the atlantic, but with wind and rain. so it's a chilly start to wednesday. temperatures could be in low single digits in some rural spots. these are towns and city values. a little bit of mist and fog where skies have cleared overnight, but it's here where you'll have the best of the sunshine, northern and western areas. a bit of cloud across eastern scotland, eastern england, one 01’ two showers. through the day, it'll be one of sunshine and showers, but the clouds will tend to build most of the showers eastern areas, tending to stay drier towards the west with the best

of the sunshine. so it could be up to 17 or 18 degrees in the sunniest spots, but generally cool, ten to 15 or 16 celsius. and then as we move through wednesday night, any showers fade away, lengthy, clear skies. the temperatures will tumble against mist and fog developing. temperatures in rural spots dipping close to freezing in a few places. generally, though, in the towns and cities, we're looking at 4 to eight degrees. now we'll start to see some changes into thursday. we change the wind direction, we lose that cooler air, something a bit milder. but this frontal system tied into low pressure will start to bring wet and windy weather initially into northern ireland, spreading across the irish sea, into western britain and pushing its way eastward. so we start dry with some early sunshine across eastern areas and it should stay dry, i think in eastern england, eastern scotland until after dark. we change the wind direction despite more cloud around 17 or 18 degrees. and it means thursday night will be milder. so a milder start to friday, but low pressure across the country bring stronger winds, sunshine and showers or longer spells of rain. some of these showers will be heavy and thundery, particularly across southern and western areas. but despite that, in the sunshine, it'll feel a little bit warmer,

maybe 19 or 20 degrees. not much change into the weekend, low pressure dominates the scene. it'll be breezy at times. there will be showers or longer spells of rain again, some of them heavy and thundery. but in the sunnier, brighter moments, it'llfeela bit warmer, 19 or 20 degrees. and another thing you'll notice, it will feel milder at night. take care.

welcome to newsday, reporting live from singapore, i'm arunoday mukharji. lets get you the headlines. ajury has found hunter biden guilty of all three felony gun charges in the first criminal trial — of a child of a sitting us president. hamas responds to the latest peace proposal for gaza, saying its ready to engage but still wants israel to commit to a permanent ceasefire and completely withdraw its forces. prime minister rishi sunak launches the conservative manifesto — with pledges on tax cuts, housing and migration. india confirms two of its nationals have been killed while fighting illegally for the russian forces in ukraine.