thank you very much, steve webb.ing there is a real difference as this government heads into that sort of territory in terms of where the coalition government was with its mandate and party pulling together. this is very different, isn�*t it? hugely and if you think about the situation we are in now, jeremy hunt has announced a wholescale u—turn and trust comics is dead. but the consequences will exist for a long period of time and even with everything reversed, there will be a big black hole in the public finances —— trussonomics. everyone is trying to work out the implications of what happened this morning, but there was a talk of a £20 billion black hole. finding that kind of money can be done but it�*s not easy and when jeremy kind of money can be done but it�*s not easy and whenjeremy hunt is going around whitehall departments asking for cuts, be it in defence or other areas of domestic services, thatis other areas of domestic services, that is going to be very painful and when the markets look at this, they wil

sir steve webb, thanks for bein: waste time. sir steve webb, thanks for being with _ waste time. next august. the postal company is blaming ongoing strike action and rising losses at the business. it says it's begun notifying workers of its plan, which aims to reduce its overall headcount by a total of 10,000. royal mail also said it expects its full—year losses to hit £350m. the company currently employs 140,000 people. and joining me now is our business correspondent marc ashdown. this is a trading update today. they have delivered some bleak news. the plan is to catch between 5000 to 6000 jobs in the nearfuture. in total, they need to lose 10,000, but they are confident that 4000 of those could be from what you would call natural wastage, people leaving or retiring and not replacing them. they are blaming this partly on strike action, but they are also shifting their business model, trying to move from letters to parcel delivery. at the moment, that is not working as they were hoping. staff have of course been on a series of strikes. they have had six days of strike action thi

you worked for steve webb who went on to be a lib dem minister.poverty, and you both having to accept, because the boss was andrew dilnot, you aren't here to comment on whether that is a good or a bad thing, you are here to look at the numbers and reach conclusions. other people make the politicaljudgments. i think that's absolutely crucial. we do lots of work on poverty, we do work on inequality, we can point out the impact of policies on that. we study inequality a lot. we look at how the structure of poverty has changed over time. but i think it is for other people to decide, is the inequality too high? we can say it is less high than it is in the us, more high than in western europe, about the same as it was 30 years ago. is that too high or not? do you want to do things that change that? that is the political judgment and one that we try at least to shy away from. let's go into some of those difficult political waters you had to be in, in thisjob at the ifs. we always have to remind ourselves, institute for, not institute of. for is very impo

and in terms of the direction ahead we spoke to the former pensions minister steve webb, who was a membertially going to be even tougher than that because the back drop is a record level of inflation, which is 9.9%. record level of inflation, which is 9.996. i, i, 4' record level of inflation, which is 9.9%. i, i, 4' record level of inflation, which is 9.9%. i, i, ~ i, record level of inflation, which is 9.9%. i, i, , i, 9.996. look, there are really tough times ahead _ 9.996. look, there are really tough times ahead and _ 9.996. look, there are really tough times ahead and the _ times ahead and the reason why the new chancellor has come in and thrown all of the previous chancellor and prime minister's tax cuts out the window and gone further than that and reversed some of the tax cuts planned by rishi sunak, the chancellor before the last one. the reason he's done that as he has come in and looked at the books and realise the scale of the spending cuts required to keep the finances on even footing are completely unimaginably large. significantly bigger introduced by those by george osbor

. - earlier, former liberal democrat pensions minister, sir steve webb, was critical of the timing ofer today. i think they should never have time limited it as far ahead of the fiscal statement as they did, because there was always going to be a fortnight�*s window, so it was a mistake to cut it short today. i think they will get away with it. ironically, i say that because all the speculation about the budget u—turn has taken the pressure off gilt yields, meaning there is more capacity for things to go up today and for pension schemes to cope. so ironically, i think the bank's gamble will have worked. let's get the thoughts of louise cooper, senior lecturer in finance at kingston university business school. you have to remember, the bank of england is supposed to be politically independent. the role of the bank of england is not to be there to bail out the government. it wanted to put interest rates up and reverse quantitative easing because we have rampant inflation. when you have rampant inflation, you should be putting interest rates up and slowing the economy. it was forced to d