Everything We Know (And Don't Know) About The Mandelson Files

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1:00Chris, when did Tranche or Tranche, if you will, become the go-to word for a pile of documents? Well, I entered my vocabulary about 20 past seven this morning on the radio. Actually, about 10 minutes before, but I thought, am I sure how to actually pronounce this word? Because I'm tempted to say Tranche, rather than Tranche. And then I googled it, and it's French, which I should have perhaps realised. polite giggles in the newscast studio. So, but it is a Tranche day, isn't it? A dollop of documents, you also. I've been trying to think of other alternatives to the word Tranche all day. Well, my googling this morning, through a portion and slice as synonyms. Chunk. Chunk. Dollar, polite dollop. You said a digital data dump or something on the radio for a six o'clock news. A digital data deluge. Well, that is what we are going to talk about. We are going to talk about the first set of documents, the first Tranche, if you like, of documents that have been released,

2:01relating to the appointment of Peter Manderson, Lord Manderson, as U.S. Ambassador. And we should do that on this episode of newscast. Newscast. Newscast from the BBC. Tatlois sliver me in the classroom during our violin lessons. I was the tattooed tail in the class. Can I have an apology, please? I trust almost nobody. That daddy has to sometimes do strong language. Next time in Moscow. I feel delulu with no salulu. Take me down to Downey Street. Let's go have a tour. Blimey. Hello, it's James and the Westminster studio. And it's Alex and the Westminster studio. And Chris and Westminster too. And later in this episode, we are going to hear from Simon Jack about the International Energy Agency, which has agreed to their largest ever release of oil reserves. But first, we have had the first release of papers relating to Peter Manderson's appointment as U.S. Ambassador. Chris, before we get into the substance, the detail, what they showed us, just remind us about how we got to this point of them being published in the first place. Yeah, because you'd be sort of forgiven with all the news in the last couple of weeks of sort of forgetting about,

3:01not necessarily the Lord Manderson route, but, you know, what were all these documents coming from? Why are we getting stuff we don't normally get? So rewind about a month, beginning of last month. Conservatives use this pretty obscure parliamentary mechanism called a humble address. And that means a humble address to the king to request documents. Now, normally, when an opposition party tries that as a mechanic, it doesn't work because they haven't got a majority. But such was the kind of colossal sense of disgust, frankly, in Parliament, about the revelations from the Epstein files. That it was impossible for Labour at the time to to try and oppose. And so it sailed through the House of Commons. I don't think there was a vote in the end. It was just acknowledged that that's what the Commons wanted. And this humble address said, look, the government should publish all sorts of documents relating to the appointment of Lord Mandelson as ambassador in Washington. And then his time as ambassador in Washington. And then since then, there's been a whole process of, oh, well, hang on, what can be published? And what about things that might be an issue

4:01in terms of intelligence, sensitivity? What about things that might imperil the UK's international relations? In other words, the relationship with Donald Trump, in this instance, the Intelligence and Security Committee, which is a cross-party group of MPs and peers that have security clearance, have been involved in all of that. And then here comes Tronch, new, actually, what would be the, I nearly said new Merot, who know? But actually, what would be the French? It's multi-lingual, you know? Yeah, I mean, absolutely. What would be the French for Tronch number one? I'm not going to be doing any French. LAUGHTER I can do your tiny bit of Spanish, but you've done that already. OK, one more or less. So yeah, and then to know it comes 137 pages of the government's answer to the Honourable, to the Humble address. 147, or reckon? Well, it's 117. But then you've got the bits at the top, which are like, this is the Humble address, and then this is why we're publishing, and this is your contents. And anyway, it's all digital, so pages, pages. What, how do you get this? How does the salt worker, because you've both been working on this all day,

5:02and were you sitting hitting refresh, you know, and then how'd you go through so much? Like, how was it all working here at Whisk? Were you an F5 merchant today on your cable? No, I actually read the whole thing top to bottom, as quickly as I possibly could, just did a thorough speed read of it. But we had in the BBC, because we knew it was coming. Chris confirmed on Tuesday night that we were expecting to get this published on Wednesday. So there was a little bit of a heads up. So yeah, the BBC had just sort of, in the Westminster team, had assigned a couple of people to section up bits of the document. I think broadly people knew what we were looking for because obviously the reason that MPs wanted this publish was because there was the question about that initial appointment of Peter Manderson and was it the right one and what did that say about the Prime Minister's judgement and what was known and what wasn't. So we had a sense of what people wanted to see in these documents, what they may or might not shed light on. So we had different people sort of sitting there when the link came through from the government, it got popped into a WhatsApp group, so everybody kind of had it and then people were sort of divvying up bits of these documents to look out for, looking out for what it could show us about what was or wasn't known around

6:06the time of that appointment. But I took the really old-fashioned old-school version of just reading it all as quickly as I possibly could. And so did I. And actually unlike that stuff we got from the Department of Justice in the States that there were stories dripping out of for well over a week because of the scale. This was, I mean granted north of a hundred pages, but readable. But that was talking to millions of people. Exactly. This was readable if you avoided distractions, like WhatsApp's pinging away, in about half an hour, 40 minutes or something. Totally right. To have a proper read of it and glean the broad gist of it. Well, that's what it gets to it then. What did we learn? You can break this down broadly into two kind of bits. So the first bit is about what this showed us and with the huge caveat that this is only a partial release because as Chris said, there is more to come. And when we get more, it might cast what we've seen today in a different light or not. But it's just worth remembering that. But of what we've seen today, the two kind of bits are one about the initial information, the due diligence that was carried out initially around

7:07Peter Madison prior to his confirmation as US ambassador. And then there's a sort of separate issue about what happened after he was sacked and how much money he was going to get. But on that kind of first bit, the one of the key documents for me was that initial due diligence document that was compiled in December before his appointment was announced. And it lists effectively on there things like Peter Mendelssohn's past associations, his business dealings, and it lists some potential reputational risks. Things like the role he had at Grable Council, the consultancy firm he worked for, things like his previous resignations from government roles under the Blair Brown government. And it also has a section there about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. And effectively in a series of bullet points, it sets out what was known publicly at the time about that relationship. And it does make clear that the relationship between Lord Mendelssohn and Jeffrey Epstein continued after Epstein was first convicted of procuring an underage girl. It also references reports that that Peter Mendelssohn stayed in Epstein's house while Epstein was in jail.

8:13So it sets out very clearly the government knew these things at the time of the appointment and it describes them as a general reputational risk. I think what's interesting on a couple of levels about this, well two things. One is much of the content of those eight bullet points I think they are on page, what is it, page 11, is the document. Were things that were in the public domain that you could have found with a bit of sort of nifty googling. The second thing I think, which I think will be interesting to newscasters, is that I think overall these revelations today were sort of interesting rather than explosive. But what you do get a sense of with real documents that the Prime Minister saw of what it's like as Prime Minister, what is in, we will frequently talk James as political reporters, Alex and I, and I know that it's about ministerial red boxes, the business of the red box. And this is the kind of stuff that confronts the Prime Minister the whole time, advice that's presented to him or her and then they read it and they have to reach a decision. Now I think the intriguing thing around all this today is firstly it's partial

9:18because we now know there is going to be in the one extra, the government plans at the moment, one extra tranche to come within weeks now whether weeks is two weeks or 13 weeks or whatever who knows. But I'm told it's not days and it's not months, it's weeks and it'll come in one ago. Now potentially that could be really really big, but let's see what's deemed admissible to be to be published. There's also the sort of nagging thought I have with stuff like this, which is that you get this fascinating insight into what goes on which we don't normally see. But what do we not know that we don't know? So what for whatever reason has not emerged? Firstly, this is the stuff that was written down, so you don't know about and there's references sometimes to informal conversations. I'm always fascinated by that. Oh yeah, oh yeah, there wasn't a meeting but there might have been some informal conversations about whatever anything. I mean a lot of business gets done in corridors. So you know there's all that kind of stuff and then crucially what we didn't get today because that's really key. Well let's see

10:18just one thing about that and then maybe we will talk about the Severance PS1, but just on that down in Jones in the comments Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister said the Metropolitan Police had asked the government not to publish certain documents as you were saying, Alex, in order not to prejudice its criminal investigation. Lord Mandelson was arrested last month on suspicion of leaking sensitive government information while serving as business secretary during the last Labour government and Lord Mandelson has repeatedly let it be known that he believes he has not acted criminally, he did not act for a personal gain and he is cooperating with the police. That's his position, this is down Jones's position, we can have a listen to it now on newscast in his statement to the House. Whilst the documents point to public reports of an ongoing relationship between Peter Mandelson and Geoffrey Epstein, the advice did not expose the depth and extent of their relationship with only became apparent after the release of further files by Bloomberg and then the United States Department for Justice. After the Prime Minister

11:23reviewed the Cabinet Office due diligence that noted public reporting on Peter Mandelson's relationship with Geoffrey Epstein, questions were put to Peter Mandelson by advises in number 10, as right honourable and honourable members can see referred to on pages 8 and 94 of the bundle and Peter Mandelson responded. These are matters that are currently the subject of an ongoing police investigation and we will publish this document when the investigation allows. When we do the House will be able to see Peter Mandelson's answers for themselves which the Prime Minister regrets believing. So effectively the government's argument at this point is twofold. They are saying once again that they didn't know at the time the breadth and depth of the extent of the relationship between Lord Mandelson and Geoffrey Epstein. They're also making the argument that because they can't release all of the documents they say they want to at this stage because of the ongoing police investigation that there might be some follow-up documents and particularly this relates to the fact we understand there were questions that were asked after that

12:27initial due diligence process about that relationship between Lord Mandelson and Geoffrey Epstein. We don't know the specifics of what the responses were and that's still a real point of contention because the Prime Minister effectively says he was lied to or they were lied to Peter Mandelson says, hang about now. Exactly. I mean right at the heart of the heart of this in terms of the political contention is precisely that and it's one heck of a claim isn't it? A Prime Minister publicly claiming that his former ambassador in Washington lied. That's one heck of a claim. Not only that. A guy who's been at the heart of that party's project for decades and decades back to Neil Kiddick in the 90s. Exactly and a claim of that gravity playing out publicly and what we got today neither verifies the Prime Minister's claim nor verifies the claim that Peter Mandelson makes which is that no he believes that he answered all of the questions around the vetting process truthfully and fully. Now as Alex says that the argument ministers make is the reason for that is the documents that would

13:29get into all of that and the government believes would verify their claim we wait to see if they do. The police so the argument goes don't want to see the light of day yet because they fear it could prejudice any future legal proceedings involving involving Lord Mandelson. So on that central claim we are still non the wiser and you do wonder at what point down the track we do get to those documents because obviously we don't know the longevity or the wise of the police investigation. They are regarded as part of tranche one rather than if you like tranche two which is still to come. So it's possible you get tranche two and we've still not got these documents. And if you're a newscaster listening to this there's a very practical sense in which this affects you beyond the principles involved because your money has been used here. Taxpayers money has been used to pay Peter Mandelson on leaving his role 75,000 pounds. That's another email in the files

14:32tells us that doesn't it that the treasury agreed a settlement of 75,000 pounds with Peter Mandelson who'd asked for more than half a million pounds he wanted several years salary didn't he? Well that's what the documents suggest. So the documents include effectively reports of conversations that suggest that Peter Mandelson thought he might be entitled to something in the excess of 500,000 which would have been the salary he would have received for that fixed term position over the subsequent four year period. The documents also suggest and report conversations that he might have been consulting senior lawyers about his rights as a sort of dismissed employee at that stage. Now Darren Jones in the House of Commons repeated that and said that Peter Mandelson had asked for a final settlement in excess of what was ultimately agreed at that 75,000 pounds mark. That's still that that that final severance pay still came in for some hefty criticism from political opponents who suggested that none of that should have been paid. Darren Jones ultimately

15:35said he thought it should be donated to charity but you've also had a bit of a sense of this as well. Yeah so my understanding is Lord Mandelson's view is that he never requested or demanded the sum 547,201 pounds and that very quickly in the conversations he was having with the foreign office they arrived at this much lower figure of 75,000 pounds. My understanding is also that he never had any intention of pursuing an employment tribunal which clearly some folk in government were fearful was one potential outcome. But what we don't what we know from these documents is what people in government concluded might happen rather than testimony written testimony from Lord Mandelson that says this is what he was demanding. So it's the government claim that he may have been wanting or began with a request as it says on page 111 negotiations began with a request by the individual to pay out the remainder of the four-year salary cost of the fixed employment. By the way just a small matter which people might be able to relate to in their own in their own

16:37experience the and this isn't surprising but I just think on a human level it's quite interesting the change in tone around the references to Lord Mandelson so it's very human early on well done Peter it's all you know welcome to that we're going to onboard you that horrible but anyway you know and we know welcome to the team all that kind of stuff and then you fast forward a hundred pages and it is the individual. That is interesting about what another thing I think newscasters might be wondering is if I look let's we we've said Peter Mandelson disputes that he should have been fired right but taking the government's argument that we had to we thought we had caused the fire this man from this storm because in their view he had lied to them in his application which he denies but if you listen to this do not think sorry wait a minute is this normal down here in Whitehall is that you get fired and they give you 75 grand who gets 75 grand when they're fired

17:37why is that and that was a point that was raised by actually several MPs and not just opposition MPs but a couple of Labour MPs actually stood up in the House of Commons and raised that very point that very question you know and another couple of Labour MPs did also make that that sort of broader point which I think you're alluding to about the sense of what I mean take away the kind of detail that can't claim the counterclaim the rights the wrongs the who knew what when why and all of that the references that were being made in the House of Commons to with this sort of broad sense of the way the world operates at these kind of high levels of power and government is not necessarily a way that many people will be able to relate to and I think when you look at some of this I think you do get the sense of that as well of the worldliness of the political this place versus the real world you know and and on that I mean the government's position correct me if I'm wrong Chris seems to be that this was the although it sounds mad to say it now the most

18:37efficient use of taxpayers money because their feeling was that they would might have to pay out a lot more if they didn't pay this amount of money but isn't the point there that there's a moral consideration there about in spending public money is not only about how much you spend but who you give the money to and what do you spend it on i.e. you know it's one thing to use it to defend what you believe to be a fair legal and morally proper decision in court it's quite another to say well we think it's going to cost us more so we'll just give this guy the money anyway I was just doing a control F to check a phrase that I remember reading about three hours ago but I wanted to check I was quoting accurately on exactly this point so the 6th of October 2025 a letter from Oli Robbins who was the top civil servant in the foreign office to James Murray the chief secretary to the treasury this is around the severance payment subject special severance payment concluding £75,000 paragraph to quote this represents good value for money so that was the

19:42argument they were explicitly making and therefore speaks to the concern that they had at the time fair or otherwise or reasonably otherwise that the alternative from the tax perspective could be much worse if this ended up either involving lawyers or it goes to a tribunal or or or indeed anything else and this rewinds all the way back to something right at the top of all of these documents which was the advice the civil service gave around a political appointment in this job irrespective of who it was completely that that is just higher risk for a prime minister because it is somebody you are picking for political reasons as opposed to a frankly more anonymous career diplomat who everything else being equal would likely have a far lower risk profile and be much less likely to be somebody who is blown out of the job months in and gets into all this kind of and it's just worth a final sort of other point that came out of these documents today was that was a note included in there from Jonathan Powell who is now Sir Keir Starmer's national

20:44security adviser when he refers back to the process that was taking place at the time around the appointment of Peter Mandelson and he calls it unusual and weirdly rushed and I think that's getting quite a lot of attention it doesn't really elaborate in the documents beyond that but that in and of itself is getting quite a lot of attention because of course the central point about this is still comes back to the judgment at the time as to whether it was rightful wrong to have appointed Peter Mandelson clearly there's a lot of hindsight now but was that the right called in that moment completely and remember the context around the context was just to state the obvious but it's worth remembering because you should say there is a bit of hindsight bias I think at the moment inevitably given what we've learnt since that wasn't known then which is this was a government determined desperate to have a workable viable positive relationship with Donald Trump a president like no other and so the decision was taken you need to make an appointment like no other and they thought that Peter Mandelson with his political skills and his connections

21:48in his contacts was the person to be the person to woo Donald Trump so that contributes towards the explanation of the timeline they had a they had an ambassador who was due to leave at just the point Donald Trump was about to be his second inauguration they needed to act quickly they felt and they thought Lord Mandelson was the man that they needed boy does the Prime Minister regret it but that was the the logic and outwardly certainly from his perspective at the time the sensible logic that led him to that judgment yeah and if I'm a diplomat newscaster listener I'm thinking she'd as stuck to the professionals is what I'm thinking probably Chris thank you very much now we promised you Simon Jack and this afternoon we got the news that the largest ever release of oil reserves had been agreed by the international energy agency yeah because we were talking on newscast on Monday I think it was James about the pressure that the war in Iran is causing on the cost of oil because of all the disruption to supply routes and the cost of a barrel at one point

22:50went above a hundred dollars a barrel which is a benchmark that people kind of look out for so now this international energy agency it's a tongue twister the i.e. yeah and all of its member countries they are hoping they are planning to release some oil hoping it's going to ease the pressure on the market that's my kind of basic understanding I think that's correct but Simon Jack knows and earlier we were joined by Simon in the main newscast studio to help us understand how this all might work and what it means for the oil industry to hello Simon hello James right you are a very very busy person today like many people I have yes but you're particularly busy so let's get on with this and I need you please to tell me first of all what is the organization that I find hard to see the i.e. the i.e. the i.e. the i.e. the international energy agency it's got about 150 members and it is sort of the collective body to sort of coordinate responses to the kind of crisis we've got right now and so what has been

23:56emerging over the last couple of days is that the countries who are members all of them are obliged to hold 90 days of oil supply in reserve earmark especially for crises like these and the UK does it and many other countries do it as well and in certain circumstances they can release this into the market in order to try and combat price spikes shortages etc and that's what we've seen so we've seen for example Japan said they might go a little early we've seen Germany saying they're going to do it and in the last hour or two the UK government confirmed that it will release 13 and a half million barrels of oil stocks into the market as part of a total of 400 million for all the i.e. a members and that would make it the biggest ever release of oil stocks in the i.e. a I'm just trying to figure out 1974 to now 52 year history we see it we saw it did it twice during the Russia Ukraine crisis it did it during Libya a bit of public but it's

25:01pretty rare and this is the biggest ever so Simon I mean they were sort of talking about this for a couple of days because of all of the disruption that we've seen to oil supplies I just wanted to give it a bit of context we're saying this is like the biggest ever but what will that actually do like how will it help ease the pressure how long does that sort of level of supply last you know what kind of practical difference is it going to make okay so in in arithmetic terms 400 million barrels of oil is about four days worth of global supply we the planet uses about 100 million a day now it's a really good question Alex because in a way it's not as if there's some big reservoir where this is all kept and you just open the gate it all comes sloshing out what happens is that the companies and the countries which have earmarked these stocks and in the UK they're all over the place in Scotland and Wales and whatever in the US they're in big caves in Louisiana and Texas what they do is they make it available to the market so refiners who make petrol and jet fuel and other things can then basically order it but the problem is is that there is a bit of a

26:04refining bottleneck in capacity so it's not as easy as just saying that doesn't become petrol overnight it's got to be refined and that is why it's generally seen as in a way more of a kind of signal that listen we're thinking about this we understand there's a problem we've all got together the G7 the IAA etc the EU and we realized and we're trying to act in a coordinated way so in a way it's a kind of sentiment boost it's a reassurance rather than a physical solution to this and because 400 million is about one-third of the total global amount in the oil reserve it's not a card you can play very often so I think it's going to be super fascinating to see as we now know it's beginning to happen what the impact is actually but going to be on the on the oil price it's a bit like if a asteroid is hitting towards earth and you've got one shot at it with a nuclear weapon or something if you miss then what so I guess is the question is it too early to see whether they have missed I mean the time now is 22 minutes to four in the afternoon on Wednesday so this

27:05has just happened right the oil price nudged $120 about all the other day drop back where is it now so it went from 120 at the height of the frenzy it came all the way back down to 81 when Donald Trump and I said that he thinks he's pretty much done and victory's almost complete at the moment it's at about $90 a barrel helped in part I think because people were expecting this coordinated action to happen so at the moment $90 a barrel is expensive remember before all these hostilities began it was at 72 so by my maths that means it's up 25 percent so that is not crisis terms but clearly it's still for I was just talking to an energy boss actually a couple of hours ago and they're saying look if this goes on for another six to eight weeks then you have a genuine genuine problem but at the moment people are thinking maybe you can get some out through pipelines from Saudi Arabia maybe there's going to be some military escorts but you know you had that sort of fiasco where Chris right the energy secretary in the US said we've escorted a vessel out and then

28:08they said oh no we didn't so all of that's going on at the moment so at $90 a barrel it's but it's expensive but it's not the kind of crisis levels we saw last week it's so interesting Simon because from what you're saying this decision to release these reserves is in part to do with sentiment it's in part to do with this kind of trying to I guess tell me if this is a wrong wrong way of raising it but you know kind of make the markets know there's an effort collectively going on to keep the kind of supply coming and we also saw when Donald Trump was talking about where the war in Iran is at that was widely interpreted as him trying to kind of calm the oil markets I just wonder you know what other levers can be pulled as it were if we carry on seeing this kind of up and down spike in prices which governments are clearly really worried about I mean that's that when I said you know if you take a shot at the asteroid and you miss and then it's still heading towards you I think we're all it's still in the place so everyone has been like Fatih Birol who's the boss of the IEA said today this is a major move but the only solution to

29:08this is de-escalation of the conflict and the reopening of the straights of a moves and that's still that's still pretty much an on-off switch in that regard in terms of how you deal with this conflict this goes on for another four or five weeks then you know then you'll begin to see well you may see oil prices begin to rise again let's see how this release goes but like I say most people are saying I mean you have Rachel Reese for example talking about fuel duty today saying we're going to keep that under review a 5p cut brought in in 2022 during the last energy crisis by the way that's due to be phased out from September that's now under review you've seen people in Austria for example telling petrol stations they can only raise prices every other weekday you've had Germany saying you could only change all the petrol prices once a day so you see this collective action but all of these in a way the margins the real substance of it is how do you open reopen a passage of 22 miles wide where 20% of the world's energy goes through and we as some newscasters will remember and you may like to know if you didn't hear it talked about that on yesterday's

30:13episode and there's it's really worth listening to if you want to know more about the straights of hormones go back to yesterday's episode just coming back here for a minute and what does this mean in terms of we've talked there a bit about the consumer and what it might mean for the consumer and certainly in terms of prices at the petrol pump for example what does this mean for British industry and for the oil industry here if anything there's been an argument about what they call the windfall tax the energy profits levy levy the North Sea oil industry to test it they think it's been outrageous because they've they argue not to be in windfall profits to be made I mean arguably now there are windfall profits to be made we're exactly at the point where we're we're told that the chancellor is considering maybe reducing or you know changing or getting rid of reforming well you would know better than anyone with your you know with your with your stock your Scotland hat on just how unpopular in some circles the energy profits levy is windfall tax by any other name some but not all absolutely yeah certainly certainly in Aberdeen and what is

31:15you know in a sort of really almost amusing bit of timing they announced last week that there was going to be some movement on reforming the energy profits levy which by the way taxes profits on North Sea oil at rate of 78% now a lot of oil companies have said this is ridiculous because actually in the last few months you know oil prices have been down at 60 and we're not making windfall profits so it's a rather strange curious bit of timing say we're going to reform the windfall tax at exactly the same time as some of the oil companies will be making some windfall profits because you soon particularly when it went up to $120 what they would say though is that we don't mind paying the taxes when it's high we do mind paying the taxes when it's low it is as I say a curious bit of timing to talk talking about getting rid of the windfall tax at a time when oil prices are rising I mean it's just so interesting because when you do have something like this where there is a real sort of shock to energy supplies what it often does is reignite the very debate about energy supplies in the UK and we've already seen that I think in recent days so

32:18around whether or not it means you should be tilting more towards exploiting North Sea oil and gas whether it means you should be tilting more to ensuring that the supply of renewable energy is more secure and we've seen some of those political arguments and the other area this is getting a lot of political traction is around fuel duty that you mentioned Simon I don't know if you caught Prime Minister's questions a little bit of it and also Rachel Reeves has asked about it earlier in Treasury Select Committee as well yeah it's become a real sort of focal point of the debate in the UK so you've got Kimmy Baidnock but also you've had a Davey Nigel Farage all suggesting the government needs to move on fuel duty because at the moment it's frozen obviously but it's due to go up as things stand from September Kirstama making the point that prices haven't gone up it hasn't increased yet it's you know due to go up in September we'll keep it under review I just don't know sort of what your sense is of are the government kind of just hoping things stabilize and that they don't have to take any action that might kind of blow another hole in the public finances with some sort of intervention whether it's fuel duty or something else you know how realistic is your sense of what they're looking at it well my guess is once you put it on the

33:21table it's definitely is there as an option and I think it would be you know given the fact that oil prices are so high fuel duty is tacked on to that remember that when you have high oil prices the government makes an awful lot of money in VAT so because as petrol prices go up there's 20% VAT on that so in a way it might be ecstatic neutral to do that at a time you know in terms of how much money they're getting I think having it it's one of those things that seems impossible to ever changes fuel duty so I think that having raised the prospect that that is a lever they could pull it'll be very hard for them to leave that on the table yeah and just absolute final note if you're listening to this as an environmentalist who's concerned about the planet you're probably thinking actually yet another reason to win herself so far but that that's probably because you can see the argument in both ways there's a lot of people are saying this is just goes to show we should have our own domestic oil and gas supplies the truth of that is is that if you get the oil the oil out of the North Sea it gets sold into the international market it's a tiny drop compared to

34:21the world supply it is not going to change the price of oil or petrol slightly different with gas most of the gas that comes out of the North Sea is actually used here in the UK other people Ed Miliband included in Ed Miliband especially maybe would say this is goes back to what I've always said that we can't rely on hydrocarbons which come from dictators or hostile volatile areas of the world that's why we need to do renewables the problem is the energy system we have at the moment the electricity price is still often set by the price of gas that's the sort of leveling out bit which sets the price of the whole market until that link is broken you don't get the full benefit of the sort of cheaper more consistent and truly domestic renewable energy Simon thank you very busy and we packed so much in thanks very much a lot to get through yeah thanks James thanks Alex and that is all for now so if you enjoyed this episode and you don't want to miss another don't forget to press subscribe on BBC Sounds and we'll be back soon goodbye newscast newscast

35:21from the BBC from one newscaster to another thank you so much for making it to the end of this episode you clearly do in the words of Chris Mason ooze stamina can I also gently encourage you to subscribe to us on BBC Sounds tell everyone you know and don't forget you can email us anytime at newscast at bbc.co.uk or if you're that way inclined send us a whatsapp on plus or four 0 3 3 0 1 2 3 9 4 8 0 be assured I promise you listen to everyone the Toyota Tundra and Tacoma are built to keep going blending rugged muscle with precision engineering all supported by Toyota's time tested legacy of dependability step into a Tundra and feel the unyielding capability with the available i Force Max engine Tundra puts out

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