Should there be a clamp-down on political donations?

0:00Meet Morgan Jones. Morgan is about to step into a world unknown to most, thanks to Progressive's renters insurance, a place of fresh linens and turn-down service. You see Morgan temporarily vacated her apartment and has gone to a hotel because a pipe burst in her apartment, a pipe that made her sense of reality and apartment ceiling all come crashing down. Luckily Morgan checked into Progressive's protection zone. Get a quote at Progressive.com. Progressive cash-off-teens insurance company affiliate and third-party insurers. This is a global production. This is LBC from Global, leading Britain's conversation with Ian Dail. Hello, everyone. Good evening. It's five minutes past seven on LBC. I'm Ian Dail here with you until 10 o'clock this evening. Don't forget, you can watch our entire program on the LBC YouTube channel, on your smart TV, if you like,

1:01and you can also watch on the LBC app or the Global Player app. Now, there is one political subject that has been dominating the headlines really ever since Friday. These two massive 36 million pound donations that have been donated to reform UK. They are cock-a-hoop about it as any political party would be, I guess, if they had that size of donation. But it has raised a question as to, what do these donors expect in return? In my experience, party donors, all they expect is for, if it's a conservative party donation, they want a conservative party to implement a policy of low taxes, free markets, small state. As I say, in my experience, and I have a little bit of experience in this, I've never come across anyone who said, well, I'll give you 20,000 pounds or half a million pounds if your party agrees to do this or the other. I'm sure there have been donations over the years to all political parties that have fallen into that category,

2:03but I think 99% of them do not. However, the fact that most people don't really know much about crypto, all they know is that it seems to be used by the Russians, it seems to be used for money laundering, it seems to be a little bit dodgy. It doesn't pass the sniff test and while these donations under current legislation seem to be perfectly legal, I think a lot of people are thinking, well, I'm not sure that they really, that I really approve of this. And I think that the, one of the reasons for the drop off for reforms, opinion poll ratings over the past few months, has been that people who've defected to reform, look at Nigel Farage and think, well, this 5 million donation that he received from Christopher Harbourn, which he says was for his personal use, that doesn't pass the sniff test. So I'm not saying that's the entire reason for their drop in support, but I do think it is part of it. It'll be interesting to see whether these two donations have a similar effect. So one can say what one likes about the ethics of donations like this,

3:04but under the current system, they seem to be perfectly legitimate. And then it comes along the Labour Party and in the guise of Angela Reiner, threatens retrospective legislation to effectively force reform UK to pay the money back. Now, I think that doesn't pass the sniff test. I think the general public would be guardless, really, whether you support reform or not, and I do not. I think most people think, well, that is just political spite. One party trying to make another party less powerful and influential. Nigel Farage says, well, this will enable us to have a level playing field. And it has to be said that if you introduce a relatively low cap on donations, as Labour are planning to do, that would make it almost impossible for any new party to come into the political field. If you introduce state funding a political party as which some people want to do, that again would make it very difficult

4:04for new entrants in terms of new political parties. So that would further enable people to think, well, this is just an establishment stitch up. And we have enough of that kind of language on all sorts of other subjects. So love to get your views on all of this. Do you think that these donations from what you know are perfectly legitimate? Do they pass a political sniff test? And what do you think of Labour's plans to introduce retrospective legislation? Which as Fraser Nelson said to Andrew Mar, it's a thoroughly un-British thing to do. Bethany Dawson, our political correspondent, is with me. This is something that has dominated the headlines really since Friday. And I suspect it's not going to go away very soon. It is not. Ian, and that's partly because the people and representations bill is being discussed in the House of Lords right now. And that is the piece of legislation that includes that potential change and that potential cap on donations.

5:04Now, the question today has been whether there would be a cap on domestic donors, as well as donors living abroad. Currently, the government has promised to introduce that rep-trospective cap of 100,000 pounds, specifically for Brits living abroad. That would include people like Christopher Harbour. Well, it's aimed at them. It wouldn't just include them. But the debate today has whether there should be a cap overall. Now, in terms of that retrospective cap, there are lots of questions, specifically how long would it be? Over the summer, ministers suggested someone would have to live in the UK for 12 months before they could support a political party. Reform, currently not saying specifically when Christopher Harbourn registered in the UK. So we don't know if they would still be able to give support. And as you've said, if they would have to give money back, which frankly sounds like an admin nightmare among other things. All of these conversations today seem to have slightly taken the wind out of reforms, sales,

6:04when it comes to them celebrating this huge cash injection. And within the last couple of hours, Nigel Farage has posted a pretty long video on social media talking about it. And here is a little bit of what he said. Now, let me tell you this. Neither Ben Dilo, nor Christopher Harbourn will be getting membership of the House of Lords. It isn't happening. We're not for sale. And will they influence policy? Yes, I hear they're going to influence policy. Ah, Farage wants a Wild West for crypto currency. Know the opposite. What I want for cryptocurrency is for us to have a regulated market with consumer protection for the seven million people in Britain that own crypto or digital assets of some kind. It's the complete opposite to what you're hearing from mainstream media and other politicians right at this moment. And nor will we be dishing out government contracts to them. Or frankly, anybody else, anyone comes to us and wants to give money.

7:05I promise you they will not as a result of that be going to the House of Lords or getting any of the other privileges that become so commonplace in our political system. So Nigel Farage there essentially saying that donors will not benefit from their donations and hitting out to other parties who have put donors in the House of Lords. I thought I said that the Lords have started debating this elections bill. And the Lords Minister Sharon Taylor said that the bill will ensure crypto bros can't buy votes, which is an incredibly pointed comment at reform. But as several people are pointing out on text here, there have been all sorts of donations to individual labor MPs from management consultancies, all of whom would be bidding for government contracts. I mean, this is, it can be seen as a pretty murky area. And there is no one party that has a clean bill of health on this is there, even though they all try to pretend that they do have the Liberal Democrats always try to be holier than that on this.

8:07But we remember was it Michael Brown, Michael somebody back in middle of this 20 years ago convicted fraudster and they took two million off him. So I don't really take anything that they say very seriously on this. I mean, political donations are a huge part of politics. I think political parties would struggle to exist and function in the way they do. And as you say, this is becoming an incredibly murky area where we're essentially saying who should be allowed to give those donations how much money there will be people saying it's not the government job. It's not the state's job to tell people what to do with their money. If they want to support a cause, they should be allowed to do so. Of course, the government's position increasingly seems to be that donations buy some form of policy sort of stake in a party. Again, that then raises questions about who their donors are and what they are doing for their own donors. Well, I say one thing for the trade unions because I think if you're going to put limits on private business

9:07to what they can donate to political parties, you have to do it to trade unions too. But it's been hilarious listening to some of the speeches at the TUC conference on this. I mean, you night on its own have given 68 million pounds to Labour over the past period. I think it goes back to 2010, 68 million pounds. And yet, nobody seems to question that. But, Bethany, thank you very much to do. Well, let's talk to an actual political donor. Andy Preston is a businessman who's a Conservative party donor and also former independent mayor of Middlesbrough. Andy, welcome. Hi. Now, I said that in my experience donations are generally made philanthropically. I'm sure that there are exceptions to this. Do you think the current system is more or less working? It could be improved. Or do you think it needs wholesale reform? Well, I'm actually pleased. I'm appalled at the size of these donations. But I'm really pleased that it's happened because it's going to make us look really hard at this horrendous situation that we have.

10:08It's gone for years. Most donors than the bigger the donor is, the more they want. So for me, in my situation, I wanted something. First of all, I wanted to support the party. The only party, in my opinion, that would actually deal with the problems in our economy. But as well as that, I've got views on homelessness policy. And I wanted to try and influence that. If you give money more than a modest amount, you can get access to ministers, shadow ministers, and people involved in policy. And that's not necessarily unhealthy where it becomes deeply unhealthy, which is where we are at with the unions and with the mega donors. If you are a monstrous donor, you are bankrolling the party, you end up as the boss. And it's the same in business. If you only have one customer who basically bankrolls your company, whether you want it or not, that person effectively runs your company. And that's the stage we are at. And that's why this is highly alarming. I would love to see a cap of, say, 100,000 pounds. And the parties will moan and they'll bleed, but they're going to have to work harder.

11:09They're going to have to go out and leaflet, and they're going to have to go out and have coffee mornings and engage with the public, which they can't be bothered to do. We need to get back to grassroots politics, and that would be a great end result from this controversy. I mean, in theory, that might be desirable, but if it was going to happen, it would have happened before now, wouldn't it? I mean, the Conservative Party and the Labour Party, the 1950s, they each had, I think, over 2 million members. Well, people don't get involved in political parties nowadays so much partly because we live in a different society. They don't have the time. If they want to support a cause, they might support the RSPCA or the RSPB or something like that rather than a political party. And yes, you're right. It would be great if the political parties were better at marketing themselves. But of course, if you do join the political party, generally, it doesn't matter which political party it is, you just then get begging letters every month asking for more money, which doesn't impress anybody. Yeah, I think there's a lot of truth in what you said. But also, members are, I'm afraid to say this,

12:11and people will shout at their radio or screen. Members are, increasingly, they are financially irrelevant. If you have someone that gives you 36 million quid, you're not really interested in the one or two million that thousands and thousands and thousands of members will give you that. Admin, it's Hassel. It's having to do all of this paperwork. It's much easier. Our political parties are lazy. They've got fat and lazy on the back of no rules. And we need to introduce some rules. And off the top of my head, I would say something like a 100 grand cap would do our political system a world of good. But if you decided to start the new and depressed and political party under your system, it would be more or less impossible to do so because you couldn't start a political party with two or three donations of 100,000 pounds. You have to build the infrastructure. You have to be able to pay for the communications. You have to have a national party. You have to have local parties throughout the country. Under your system, fine, we've got the existing parties that we've got.

13:13But it would essentially be an establishment stitch-up to prevent any new entrance. I don't see like that at all. Do you know what? This country and this world are full of people that have created movements, grassroots movements and businesses from scratch. They have an idea. They articulate it well. They get a pocket of support and they grow from there. And if we look at, for example, if we actually look at reform successes that don't remember their support has been ebbing now for about nine, 10 months, their support really went skyrocketed on an amazing trajectory when they had a lot less money. Look at the greens who've got to almost 19% in the pool. They almost overtook Layla on an absolutely... And the reason part of the reason that they've tanked in the pool since, I mean, there are many reasons. But one of the reasons is, is because they don't have really any big national dough. I don't believe that. And they can't create the infrastructure that they need. I'll give you an example, really interesting one. So I'm not Andy Burnham's biggest fan. I think he's probably a lovely man.

14:13I think I'd like him if he could... It was a big contort today, because that's... Absolutely. But do you know what I loved yesterday? The fact he went and did the great north run. And people say it was all PR. My understanding is he was asked to do it many a long time ago. He agreed to it before he was PM. He did that. The value of the social media traction and the mainstream media attention on that is colossal. It's worth millions upon millions upon millions. And I think if we cap donations, politicians are going to have to work harder. They're going to have to engage with the public and do more stuff. They're lazy and they're fat. And it's because they relied on monstrous donations from a tiny group of people. But your monstrous would be another person's sort of minuscule. I mean, I think... How much do you donate? I donate 50,000 a year. Right. Well, I mean, some people listening to this would say, well, that's monstrous as well. It shouldn't be 50. The cap should be 25,000, 25,000. And maybe it should. That's all for discussion. I'm not saying I have all the answers, but I'm certain of this Ian. If somebody donates 40, 50, 90% of a party's total income,

15:14that person is in charge. Now, maybe these people are guys are lovely people. I don't know them from Adam. They might be Dr. Evil. I don't know. But I guarantee you those two between them are now running reform. Well, I remember back in 1997, when the Conservative Party was... I lost how the terrible election lost was effectively bankrupt. And Michael Ashcroft came in and gave them a five million donation, which effectively saved them from bankruptcy. Now, that proved to be quite controversial because people did make the accusation that you've just made. Well, he's now in total charge of the party. And there's no doubt that he, over the following 10 or 15 years, did influence the party in its election campaigning. But I think he did it out of a genuine sense of philanthropy because he knew that if they didn't have that money, they would have effectively ceased to exist. Yeah, indeed. I think what he could have done and what would have been healthier if he'd put some money into fundraisers. How the series of fundraisers across the country and got lots of individuals involved that are donating 1,000, 10,000 to 20,000 to the party. That's hard.

16:14But that's harder. Writing a check for a mega wealthy manor woman is the easiest thing in the world. And the influence it buys, I promise you, is very dangerous. And thank you very much indeed. That's Andy Preston, a business friend who is a Conservative Party donor. Right, we'll get your views in a moment. What do you make of this? I'm not going to comment on this. What do you make of this? I'm not going to call it a scandal because I don't think it is a scandal. It all seems to be perfectly legitimate. But just because it's legitimate doesn't mean to say that it passes the sniff test, does it? This is LBC with E and Dail called 03456060973. It is 23 minutes past seven on LBC. We will go straight to your calls on political donations. I don't want to just make this all about reform because although it is their story in a sense, I think we need to look at what the other parties have been saying and doing. And ask whether you think that it is right for Labour effectively to say, well, we're going to introduce retrospective legislation

17:15to claw back this money or make reform return it. I think that would be a very dangerous path to go down. We don't generally have retrospective legislation in this country. And that is for a very important democratic reason. Simon's in Exeter. Hello, Simon. Who? Yeah. I think a 72 million pound donation is absolutely obscene. I mean, one of the donors was pardoned by the most corrupt president in modern times. And for fraud. So I mean, it just stinks to high heaven. And I mean, I can understand the point about retrospective, your point about the smell test with retrospective policy. They say, I mean, even if they are able to keep the money, it will be gone in a year. They've got no fiscal responsibility whatsoever.

18:18I mean, there'll be an absolute spend fest. And then there'll be screaming for more money in a year's time. Well, Nigel Farage maintains that this will enable them to compete with Labour and the Conservatives on an equal footing at the next election, because he says, look, we need to have campaign managers in each constituency. We need to have proper policy preparations for if we get into government. And I mean, there is a logic to that. And I think even those of us who aren't reform supporters, I think if they did get into government, surely just as ordinary citizens, we'd rather they were prepared rather than ill-prepared. Well, I mean, look at Derby. I mean, it's an absolute disaster. And so that gets good indication of what reform will be. Like if they got into government, it'll be annoying if they got into government. It'll be, they take the Trump playbook. I mean, they are incredibly corrupt.

19:21I mean, look at that. Well, just because they're incompetent doesn't mean to say they're corrupt. They are out of make. Like did you see the channel for documentary with Farage sticking down and sticking six voices down his throat and going boom, and when he realizes that it get half million quid, absolutely disgraceful. Well, that's all being investigated. But you quoted a local council, and I repeat, just because a local council is incompetent doesn't necessarily make it corrupt. It feeds down from the top in, feeds down the top from the top. I mean, the conservatives were just as corrupt. I mean, in Coke when during COVID, Farines, Moan, Ian Duncan Smith, 50,000 pound being an actual consultant for a hand sanitizer company, it's disgraceful. I mean, this sort of thing, I mean, MP should be on 150 grand a year

20:21without any outside work whatsoever. They shouldn't be having, I'm working outside of being an MP whatsoever. I mean, it's perfectly reasonable to suggest that the whole political system needs to be reformed. And I would agree with you in some ways. And when I stood for parliament, I actually made a campaign promise that I wouldn't have any jobs outside my job as an MP. Fat lot of good it did me, but there we go. And I think there is something to be argued for that. But fine, argue that, argue for the system to be changed, but don't argue for it to be changed retrospectively because that is a very dangerous path to go down. And it's the sort of thing that dictators do. Yeah, well, it'll be gone in a years time. They'll spend it, they'll spend it like water. Well, if they do and they get no benefit from it, then nobody else is going to give them that kind of money. Are they? When you were saying, and when you were saying, you're not union would get us getting given 58 million to the 68.

21:22Yeah. Oh, 68 million. Sorry. I mean, I'm a member of a union. I want my money. I want donations to go to labor. We labor that money that's been donated has been regulated since 1915 I heard today. I mean, it's some and so they are adhering to the law. They are. But this, this absolutely stinks. They got crypto billionaires that are actually making money out of grifting people. I mean, they create these this cryptocurrency. This like Trump, he's made billions out of people. You know, the crypto, he's crypto currency. The Trump currency was, I mean, he sold for billions and he's gone through the floor. In value. He's made billions out. Well, if he's gone through the floor, I'm not quite sure how you're to make billions, but there we go. Simon, thank you. Let's go to Jerry and with Lee Bay. Hello, Jerry. Good evening. Evening.

22:23Okay. Right. So how are they getting money from people who expect something? So horrible. When I look to my people is worth about 18 billion. He can walk off into the sunset in any country and do anything you want. And he doesn't even need to worry. So if you can make 18 billion with UK crypto, Lord, as it is. And he's abroad already. Why does he need a big change in the UK in order to do more? I don't know. That Dello is out of crypto anyway now. So I don't whether he's really interested in crypto legislation at all. And the unions. We're talking about linking money to political outcomes. The unions have been on numerous times saying that.

23:26Basically, if the Labour Party doesn't do this, we'll cut the funding. If it's Labour Party doesn't do that, we'll cut that. And they're quite open about it. I mean, Sharon Graham, the leader of Unite could not be more open and honest about it. So I mean, that you see, that's the thing. That's why people suspect that that's what these big donors to the Conservatives and reform really think, but they never come out and say it. Quite correct. And then we have the Paul by Jail partners. So the unions give all their money to Labour, but a Jail partners poll while back showed that 28% union members voted Labour and 28% voted reform. So why is the union not reflecting its members and giving half to Labour and half to reform or doing in proportion to the way their members vote? Well, well, it calls the polls from Jail partners. One has to treat with some suspicion now after the recent

24:26revelations. So I'm not sure that that really helps your case, Jerry, but thank you very much indeed for the call. We'll take more of your calls in a moment. So that's coming in on this and we'll also talk a little bit more about well, first of all, Donald Trump's comments on a United Island at the weekend and this meeting today between John Swinney, Reen Apiorethi, applied cum reliever in Wales and Michelle O'Neill from Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland and see if there are any any little morsels that we can clean from what they said today. The endale on LBC, tax date for 850. 733 on LBC. Now the first ministers of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have met today and declared that anti-Bernam and everyone else in Westminster don't have the right to block democracy with the Scottish and Northern Irish leaders demanding the independence referendum to be held in their countries. This comes after Donald Trump visited the Republic of Ireland over the weekend and said this.

25:26I've always loved the people of Ireland and it just seems to me that you have Northern Ireland and you have Ireland and it seems to me that one of the naturals of all time is what I'm together. That's not in my opinion but in a better way many people agree I made the comment just I just I made what I considered to be a fairly routine. I've had so much support on that and they asked me about Scotland that one I will talk about. I'll say that for another day. I'll say that for another day. I mean for a foreign leader to intervene in the domestic affairs of another country is quite something and I think that those remarks from Donald Trump there illustrated that either he had terrible briefing because not everyone in the Republic of Ireland actually does want that to be united island, not everyone in the nationalist community in Northern Ireland once there to be united island is far more complicated than

26:26Donald Trump seemed to suggest so goodness knows what he was trying to appeal to that. Well Sean Woodward joins me now for the Northern Ireland Secretary in the government led by Gordon Brown. Sean when you heard good evening when you heard what Donald Trump had said what were you media thought? Well first of all good evening Ian my media thought of course was here he goes again. I mean the interesting thing about Trump is he does speak with enormous casualness I mean you know he's weighted into this issue which most of us spend acres of our time being so careful about and he makes a remark like this which is typical Trump but typical Trump also is his ability to name an issue that actually is a debate and we would be I think mistaken even if the numbers probably do not support it if we said this is not a debate that is happening in significant parts of

27:28Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland so people are talking about it the president was incredibly casual he's wandered into a debate with you know big boots but there's no surprise that I mean you know arguably he did just that on almost every other policy he's ever spoken about. Now Chris Bryant your successor as Secretary of State I haven't heard him make any comment on this and Chris is never short of a word or two in normal circumstances I mean is this something the British government should just stay well clear of? No definitely the British government should not as an issue still well clear of it because of course unlike the arguments that might pertain to Scotland or to Wales there is already a consent within the good Friday agreement that if a majority of people in Northern Ireland want to do this then actually it would happen. What Chris has got to be mindful of is this very important

28:30issue that we've never completely properly defined which is what is it that would actually trigger the moment when the Secretary of State says there should be a poll on the border and we've never defined that and arguably the numbers are increasing we could argue one way or another over that but if we look at Scotland and if we look at Wales and we look at Northern Ireland the constitutional positions are different could Friday agreement does that in Wales I think the rhetoric is well ahead of the position the majority of the people in Wales don't want to leave the United Kingdom but there is a debate there and we should be mindful of that in Scotland as you know the numbers are very evenly balanced but there's no constitutional position already enshrined in the way there is in Northern Ireland so there is a special responsibility on Chris Bryant our Secretary of State to be very mindful of this and I suspect it would be intelligent

29:34for him with his officials to be saying look I think we should map out what would the conditions be in which a future Secretary of State or himself but I suspect it's a future one might say if these are satisfied we would have to have a poll. Sean thank you very much indeed that's Sean Wood with the former Northern Ireland Secretary in the Gordon Brown government well let's get a view from Dublin Pat Leighe is political editor of the Irish Times and joins me now Pat very good evening I was listening to your podcast yesterday which you recorded after the events on Friday with Donald Trump was it Saturday now and you were almost incredulous at some of the things that he'd said although in a sense not surprised I suppose. Hi Ian good to be with you and yeah I mean no that you've sat through a full Trump speech or a full Trump rally or a full Trump press conference I dare say not all of your listeners have because our familiarity with Donald Trump comes mostly

30:37from you know brief clips on the news or social media or whatever but to actually sit through a full hour half hour of Trump is quite the experience and I think his comments about a United Ireland even though there does seem to have been some element to which they were premeditated so for instance they were raised we know from some reporting in Dublin yesterday with both the president of Ireland and with the T-Shuck in private meetings before he gave that press conference but he shoots it from the hip on such a wide variety of subjects that you know sometimes I often think it's it's best to see what Trump does rather than what Trump says and I can get no sense that since it's just finished point that I get no sense that there is an official change in US policy towards Northern Ireland as a result of these comments. Do you think that he thought he was

31:37actually being helpful to me whole Martin whereas in actual fact I suspect that me whole Martin would rather talk about anything else than Irish unification at the moment. I'm not sure that other people's needs really come into the Trump calculus all that much in. I think for what it's worth my guess is that what he was trying to do is send a signal to Irish Americans at home in advance of the midterms now the Irish American vote has changed massively but I think that Trump's conception of politics is very much rooted in that sort of 1970s 1980s New York idea of politics and in that environment you know being strongly supportive of Irish unity was certainly one of the ways of courting the Irish vote. I think it's also likely to be the case that he wanted to put his finger in in the in the eye of Andy Burnham which he's been doing with recent Prime Ministers and he may have thought

32:38that this was the way to do it may have thought that this plays to a hometown crowd I suspect that the subtleties and the nuances that I guess you'd be familiar with and clearly Sean Woodward from his comments there is familiar with might be lost a little bit on Mr. Trump who's maybe not noted for his you know layered and nuanced understanding of the word. Now the Irish Times conducts a survey every year with voters within the Republic and also in the north about the prospect of reunification. What do you have public opinion moved markedly over the last few years and where do you think it stands at the moment. Yeah we've been doing this for a couple of years we hope to do it again in the future and I suppose you know if you would look look to the top line poll findings what they were tend to suggest is that there is a clear majority for the status quo in Northern Ireland and as you reference to Sean Woodward earlier on that includes a substantial

33:39minority of people from a Catholic background in the north who are in the south. I think that if there was a border poll tomorrow morning that they would vote in favor of maintaining the union with with great Britain in the south there's about two thirds of people consistently say maybe a little bit less say that consistently that they would vote for unity in the morning however there's an important caveat with that and that is when you begin to ask them things like well would you be prepared to bear the expense of it would be prepared to pay more taxes to integrate Northern Ireland do you think that you know the flag and the anthem and the symbols of the state and the nature and identity of the existing Republic of Ireland should change to accommodate the inclusion of unionists from Northern Ireland then all of a sudden support tends to head south far it so it's it's not it's a clear picture in so far as we can say that the south would say yes and the north would say no at the moment but I think within that there is as Sean Woodward said

34:41there is a conversation going on it demographics are moving in the north though demographics have seized to be as reliable an indicator of a position on the constitutional status as they once were so there is a kind of a growing middle ground made up of people from traditionally Protestant or Catholic backgrounds that no longer identify purely as British or as Irish but instead you see this sort of an emergence of a Northern Ireland identity and those people tend not to see every single political question through the lens of the constitutional issues so there's clearly things happening on the ground in Northern Ireland that is very interesting but that's a rather long-winded way of answering your question to say if there's a referendum tomorrow there is no evidence that the north would vote for unity quite a lot of evidence that suggests that it wouldn't. Pat thank you very much today that's Pat Leahy political editor of the Irish Times and the podcast that I reference it's the Irish Times Inside Politics podcast which they do two or three times a week absolutely brilliant listen.

35:42Right back to your calls on the reform UK donations let's talk to Moses in Ealing hello Moses. Hi and thank you very much for taking my call. First of all I think you should be capped but I'm an individual but when you talk to about union you keep saying union pays so much money. Union made up hundreds of thousands of people it is not one person so when the union paid the money it means hundreds of thousands of people individually paid nearly well up to a point but I mean you are correct in the basics of that but of course the thousands of people that have paid money I mean many of them might not actually even be Labour Party supporters and yet their money still going to the Labour Party we know that there are many conservatives many reform voters who are not only union members and the union leader speaks as if they are speaking for every single member of their union when they pay to the aren't.

36:42Yeah but majority of the people who pay the fees, who pay the membership and they have to have the voice. There are so many people but when one individual pays it sounds fishy it smells. Yeah no I get that and I understand why people think that there is particularly with this amount of money that there must be some quid pro quo and I can't sit here and tell you that there isn't but my experience of donations in the Conservative Party and a bit of there are a lot smaller than this one is that yes people what generally want a right of centre angle to Conservative Party policies but you don't normally get people saying okay well I give you a hundred thousand pounds but you've got to be careful with the guarantee that you're going to cut income tax by one P. No they don't but there is something just to bring in this conversation you just complain about Donald Trump and outside they interfere with the country.

37:43This guy who paid 36 million is an outsider. Well he's a British citizen and now apparently he now lives in this country so he's not quite the outsider that you're thinking that outside that when he pays 36 million as one person there must be something he wanted and then you know they say they don't want to be in a law or they don't want to have a title but there's something else in it which we don't know at the moment but it sounds very very well I suspect that they think that Nigel Farage in Reform UK would be much more crypto friendly for other parties and the evidence suggests that they're right on that. Moses thank you very much indeed. Ian Dale on LBC. 749 on cross question at eight o'clock here May the MP Labour Transport Minister and MP for Selby. Harriet Cross conservative shadow Scotland Secretary and MP for Gordon and Bucken. Grain Tolla, member of Reform UK's decision making board.

38:44He's been an advisor to Nigel Farage from more than 20 years and Hashim Muhammad Barrester and Broadcaster who's the author of this report. People like us. Right back to your calls on the Reform UK donations and Labour's plans for retrospective legislation or apparent plans. Let's go to Sam who is in Strom Bowley which is apparently in Italy. Hello Sam. Hi. Hi. What would you like to say? I just think with this latest thing with regards to like the reform donations and financial. I think it's just another thing like a like a line. Do you have the five million that put through the you know the guy that went to prison in Wales. The leader for Russian stuff. I just obviously the channel force of I just think it's like another example that it's just reformed. I don't know they just better really operate in a like in a very professional way. Is he going to?

39:44I think that is very true on some of the things that you've mentioned there. I suppose to be fair every political party has had its scandals over the years. Financial, sexual people behaving badly. It's not unique to them. Yeah, but I just think if they have all these things and now and then even in any power like what if they get in like you know they get into government and has lots of power like no. I don't know. Well, I think that there is a fear of that and if Nigel Farage was here now I suspect what he would say to you is yeah I hear you that is that is a risk. But the fact is we've been given all of this money and we can now prepare properly for government. We can actually set up policy commissions on all sorts of things which inevitably will cost money. We can communicate better in a more professional manner. We can just make the party much more professional than maybe it has been in the past. That's what he would say I guess. Yeah, I think I acknowledge the funding to get them on like a

40:49more like a balance with the labor and consensus. But I feel like the issue is that it comes from the source of them are so narrow they come from two individuals and this is a large. I think it's very like it's quite a conclusion to roots of those those sort of they don't want anything of return for it. I think it's quite hard to think about. I don't disagree with you. I think most politicians would rather they had a much broader financial base than they do and it's not healthy when it's just from two individuals. At times in the Conservative party's history it's been very, very reliant. I mentioned earlier Lord Ashcroft earlier but you look at to date Lord Sainsbury David Sainsbury is funding of the Labour party certainly during the Blair years and subsequent to that he's donated I think somewhere around 30 million pounds and also funded Labour support groups like progress outside

41:49the actual party. So all parties have their problems with financial donations. I think we have to recognise that it goes with the territory which is why the system is in need of reform but not retrospectively I would argue. Sam thank you Susie's enrichment. Hello Susie. Hello good evening. The call of before last was absolutely convinced that the the mega donor must have wanted something for himself personally. It must have been self-interest and I don't agree with that. It is possible to feel very strongly a moral position of what you feel is best for Britain and it doesn't necessarily advantage you in any way. I'm very sorry that people assume that the donors must have had in view a personal advantage and I give you the example of myself and Brexit. I was happier when we were in the EU in terms I'd love to have

42:52gone and moved to somewhere in continent of Europe. It would have been terrific. I'd have loved it. I thought it was profoundly wrong that our legal system was subordinate to statute law and ours was common law and out of a really high principled moral position I voted against my own interest. I just offer that. Well I think you make a very good point but we've got into a situation where if you are filthy rich decoyne phrase everyone seems to think that you are a person of loose morals that you have no morality. I know quite a few very rich people and I would say I can't think of any of them that I would describe as a moral many of them donate huge amounts of money to philanthropic causes to charity to art galleries to all sorts of different things. They don't expect any reward for that and they don't expect

43:52any reward for political donations but the problem is that you only have to have one bad apple and essentially smears everybody else who is a political donor with the same reputation and I'm afraid that is what we've got to in our political system at the moment. Susie thank you very much Chris is in Richmond. Hello Chris. Hello good evening. I think there's a lot of poll clutching going on here. The first thing I would say is reform don't want retrospective legislation but they're quite happy to revoke the indefinitely to remain a million people in the country. Well if that isn't retrospective legislation then what is? I mean they can't have it both ways can they? I mean they don't want it for good. No I don't think that is because they can only introduce that if they're voted into government and that's part of their manifesto. But it's retrospective it applies retrospectively to people from here. The most important is what it means. I mean we would think that is a very different policy. But I think it's very different from changing the financial rules

44:54sort of after somebody has just got a massive donation. I mean it's safe for example in 2005 or whenever it was that the Liberal Democrats got their fraudulent two million donation. Say that Tony Blair had suddenly announced that he was going to change the law say Liberal Democrats weren't allowed to receive such large donations and made it retrospective. No one would have thought that was fair. Well I don't necessarily agree I think they need to be cap on donations full stop which I think they lived in with anyone. I'm not I'm not a spokesman for them. I've said for a long time but the other one would say because they never get big donations. Well they've had a reason for that one. Either way it pollutes our democracy and people saying you know in Fraser Nelson was on just before talking to Andrew mine and he made an excellent point before. I've already given these crypto billionaires what they want. They said they're going to drop the trousers when it comes to tax. We're going to change the regulations and we're going to prevent the bank of being from setting up a rival crypto country. What more can they do? They've already got their they've got their return on investment. It's fundamentally corrupt. Now we're talking about the banking system in this country.

45:56It is frankly scary. And if it means that we have to do this legislation let's do it. The other point Richard Tyson's interview this morning on the Robinson of the State program and he couldn't answer straight questions about whether those individuals have been resident in this country for a sufficient amount of time to align with electoral law and donations. What does that tell you Ian? Okay. All right Chris thank you. Let's go to Michael and Rayne's park. Hello Michael. Good evening there Ian. I hope that you're well. I totally agree that retrospective legislation here is crazy. I'm not surprised that Angela Rainer suggested it and it just shows how panicky labor are about this funding situation as suggested by the email that they put out over the weekend. I mean I think that we need a change in the political culture in this country. Only individuals should be able to donate.

46:58Union donations should be completely banned and individual should be able to donate up to say 2000 pounds per year and those donations tax relief should be applicable in order to encourage ordinary people to know. You've basically bankrupted the Conservative party, the Labour party, the Liberal Democrats and reform. Why that? Well because if you have a limit of 2000 pounds, I'm sorry, political parties would not be able to finance themselves on that. Well the political parties will have to go out to ordinary members and beg and borrow. I mean if only they do that already. They do that to a great extent. I think they could probably do that more.

47:59And as you as you note, the political parties in my experience are very reliant on the big donations. You know, the Conservative party, for example, they have that black tie events every every year in May fair. What is it? The black and white party or what? Well that raises I think about a quarter of a million pounds. What's wrong with that? Well I've got no objection to people going along to a black tie event. But in my opinion, political parties need to be much more reliant on smaller donations. I mean I've got no particular objection to these crypto donations as long as consumers are protected in the long time.

48:59Okay, but Michael, we have to leave it there because we've reached the end of the hour. Thank you very much indeed. Coming up on cross question over the next hour, we will be talking to Labour Transport Minister and MP for Selby Keir Mayther, Harriet Cross, Conservative Shadow Scotland Secretary and MP for Gordon and Buckingh. Grain Toller, member of the Reform UK's decision making board and Hashemahamid, the barrister and broadcaster. They are here to answer your questions on 03456060973. You can watch that number with your question if you prefer to. You can text 84850 and of course you can watch us on Global Player, the LBC YouTube channel and the LBCM. This is LBC from Global, leading Britain's conversation with the LBCM. Hello, we're very good evening and welcome to Monday's cross question with me in Dale on my panel tonight. Next to me on my left we have Harriet Cross, Conservative Shadow Scotland

50:01Secretary and MP for Gordon and Buckingh. Next to her, Grain Toller, member of the Reform UK's decision making board also been an adviser to Nigel Farage for more than 20 years. I get less from Erda. Hashemahamid is way to my right. He is barrister and broadcaster. The author of the book People Like Us, what it takes to make it in modern Britain and making his debut on the show is the Labour Transport Minister and MP for Selby Keir Maida. So they're here to answer your questions. You can phone in on 03456060973. You can watch that number. You can text 84850 and of course you can watch us on Global Player, the LBC app or the LBC YouTube channel. Call 034560673. Text 84850. Cross question. Watch live on our free Global Player app or the LBC app. Right, our first question is on WhatsApp. It's from David who says whether it's glasses, wallpaper or crypto.

51:04Wouldn't politics be cleaner and gain more trust if the state funded politics? And government properly in this country? What David really means is you the taxpayer funds political parties. Granted let's come to you first. No, and no for a variety of reasons. The first one being that it would be there would be no chance for any new entrance ever to arrive again. Because funding of political parties would be based on the previous results. So therefore a party that did well last time would get more money because they got more votes. Which means that no new entered could ever happen. And so therefore it's bad on that level. It's also it's our hobby. It's what we do. Why should the taxpayer fund what I get up to? I don't think that's right. I know there's a small amount at the short money not that small, but quite a small amount of short money that goes into research operations for those parties that have had people elected. But no, I think it's a very, very bad idea. How are it cross?

52:04You know, I agree with all that. It's I can think of many, many ways to spend taxpayers money. But on political parties is not anywhere near the top of the list. And I'm not even sure it makes the list. Politics. Yes. Okay. There are always questions about how politics is funded. Where money comes from? Who is donating and why? But reversing that back to a burden on the taxpayer cannot be the answer at all. As Gwen said, it's an issue of sort of new entrance. But also who should determine then who how much each party gets and what the priorities should be, IE of taxpayers funding party A, party B, party C? Well, we can do that already through the short money as Gwen pointed to this. But then stitch that system up by making sure that you had to have a certain number of people elections so therefore reform got fewer. A fewer amount, a smaller amount from the short money, even though they got more votes because post-Carswell. Well, there are different ways of sending in cash. The Car'swell was elected as the one UKIP MP. The rules were changed because he would have had a vast amount of short money if he'd chosen to take it,

53:05which he didn't. So they changed the rules to stop them. Let's think of party run by Nigel Farage. Funny that. Stagdischarmist stitch up. That's what I'm saying. I'll just say it's not the first time that Gwen would be the last. Now, Hashima Hammett is the most non-political person on this panel. Do you understand why a lot of people increasingly are very unhappy with what they see in terms of political party funding, not just with reform at the moment, but all parties have had their issues with this? Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely political, just not party political. But I think one of the things that I agree with is that the money that comes into our politics and the way that it seeks to influence our politics is hugely important. You can't have somebody giving millions of pounds to this country and one political party in particular, which apparently, as I understand it, about a year ago, was trying to influence the Bank of England to think about what we should be doing with cryptocurrency, for example.

54:06The Labour Party with the unions and their interests, the Conservatives, with their particular donors, with their interests. I don't think there is a perfect answer to this question. If you go down the route of the government funding political parties, the way in which you do it, how people qualify, whether or not it works, are all going to be matters of huge disputes. It works in European countries because they have multiple parties. They don't just have sort of two or three parties to dominate. There are multiple parties you can go to Sweden or Spain and you could have about 10, 15 political parties that will end up fighting a particular election and who might then end up putting together a coalition. I don't think government funding or state funding of politics is the right or the complete answer. But certainly, my clear view on this is if you do not have a direct interest in the everyday life of this country, you should not be allowed to donate a significant amount of money

55:07from abroad in order to influence our day-to-day life. Both of these crypto billionaires, they are British citizens. They haven't been living in the country, but they are both apparently now registering to vote in the country. So they are moving back here, I think. What do you make of the idea that there should be retrospective legislation to solve this? I think that's bonkers. If you think about any form of legislation in this country, and as a barrister and as a lawyer, I deal with things like this all the time, the idea that you can legislate to outlaw or in some way render a past act unlawful retrospectively, I think that would be a very, very bad move. Now, as we were discussing earlier, there are some instances where a particular legislation has led to perverse, difficult, unjust results and the government then legislates to capture that particular gap to then make sure it's also captured retrospectively. So for example, one of the women whose pensions were not actually properly captured.

56:14For example, that works, but the idea that you will try and essentially legislate to impact one particular political part is recent gains, I think that is a very dangerous move. Well, I think it's right that the rules are set by legislators in a way that ensures fairness, but I don't believe that the government's role should go further than that. I think ultimately, British democracy is a beautiful thing to the envy of the world, but it's also a fragile thing, and an important quality that has come into this debate, as a result of those two reformed donations, is around proportionality and around whether donations of that size and that scale, through difficult seats in our politics, and when the genie in that sense is let out of the bottle, whether it can be put back in. There is also a question about what your interest is in making these donations, and you're of course right to say that Nigel Farage met with the Bank of England and made the case for having more liberal policies in regards to crypto,

57:15and now these two donors who are crypto billionaires have made this enormous payment. I think British voters have got a sense of decency and fairness, and I think they can detect unscrupulous behaviour when it arises, and I think they can see it pretty clearly in this case that this doesn't pass a sniff test, and that's before we even get to the questions around the £5 million gift, the criminal investigations into some conducts at Reform UK. Ultimately, we all have got an obligation as politicians to preserve and protect British democracy, making sure those rules are fair and proportionate is absolutely right, but we've got to make sure that we curb the worst excesses as well. So you're sounding from the initial part of your answer a little less keen on retrospectively looking at this, and Angela Rainer was on the television yesterday. Well, we've had this argument about... Don't want to encourage a Labour split, but thank you, Shush. We've had this discussion having me about whether these things should be retrospective. I think the point is, at the moment, that these two donations that have been made in terms of whether they're proportional,

58:15the main thing that we're trying to protect is that voters in the UK don't have their voice... But the people who call for a voice dialogue... What does that even mean? It means that they've got a bigger donation than you've had? No, I don't think that is what it means. I think that what we want to see is that our politics doesn't become about who can pay the most, and it doesn't become about diluting the voice of voters over a small group of people who can donate enormous contributions of money. You were right to raise, I think I heard earlier, with other callers donations to the Labour Party that are made by individuals. These are orders of magnitude greater, and we should say as well that some of those donations you were talking about that were made to the Labour Party are by taxpayers who live in the United Kingdom or by organisations that are registered in the United Kingdom and pay a ton of tax. When one of the two donors to reform the UK was resident in Thailand, what was he contributing to the UK? What's staked as he have in the pletical future of our country? I think voters look at that and it doesn't pass. Right, it's quite interesting. Right to reply. One on the retrospective, the House of Lords Constitution Committee talked about retrospective legislation, I'll get it right.

59:16They concluded that such profitions are inherently constitutional suspects and were used, they should be based on necessity rather than desirability. I think, and you were talking about proportionality, creating a law specifically to stop donors to one political party sounds to me disproportionate and sounds to me unfair. The fact is, one of the amendments was put in about back dating after Mr Dello moved back to the country in order to make it a year, you have to be here for a year. Sorry, you abide by that, he comes back, he says, I want to donate. He says, okay, to do so you've got to come back so he comes back and then you back date. That's to say no, you've got to be here for a year. That does not look fair. Do you contest those? All of these rules would apply to political parties equally. The same standards of conduct would apply to every single person. Yes, but partly the Labour party doesn't have a problem with it. This is how this is coming up now when they've had this money. You can see what Greg is saying. This is how it's going to be. There's no way you can try to convince me for a right time.

1:00:17It's where all the fields, where you're running out with the people. With the border road, the boundary road, we're on the field in the thing. Just about a smack something over mid-autumn and you get the road and run away with it. It is deeply unfair. I think you're right. The country is a generally fair thing. Also, when it comes to the... You talked about the crypto. Yes, we talked to Mr Farragham, Mr Tyce, talked to the Bank of England about crypto. We've been banging on about crypto for about 20 years. Therefore, they're not buying anything from us. For years and years and years, what I call the tribe, the various iterations of parties that by Farragham received donations. We've often been attacked for them. But we could do absolutely nothing. These were the cleanest donations in British politics because you could get nothing from us. Not as much as no B.E. But, however, we've been banging on about this for a long time. We're not giving them anything. We actually believe in entrepreneurship. We believe in change. We believe in small business. We believe in these things. They've come to us because of that. If you're an ordinary voter who's maybe being quite entranced by an hour to Farragham,

1:01:17he's a man who says what he thinks and does what he says. And then the 5 million donation happens. I think even you would accept that that hasn't been handled in real time. That hasn't been handled in real time, brilliant. So, ordinary voters who don't obsess about politics in the way that the 4 of us probably do look at that and think, well, I'm slightly disappointed in Nigel Farragham, actually. And then they look at this what's his name, Ben Dilo who was convicted in the United States of, well, I'm not exactly sure what the crime was, but he was then pardoned by Donald Trump. It was all to do with the fact that they hadn't set the regulation in their company up to properly. Part of the problem, as far as I understand, and I'm not an expert on the American legal system and so on and so forth, but part of the problem was he created an entirely new thing. He went to Hong Kong, created an entirely new thing, did very well, in very short period of time. But he didn't have adequate anti-money law and protection in place. But part of the problem was he was creating something so far. The regulators and others were not keeping up. Now, there was that breach. He made that breach and he was fined, I think, $10 million and bound over two years and was pardoned.

1:02:19But I think it was more a question of the system was not keeping up with him. And that may well be true, but the problem was not providing the law. But can I just deal with something in what was said earlier about? We've always been for entrepreneurship. We've always wanted companies like this to do well. It just so happens that we were pro crypto and they came to us. It's almost like saying, if I go around today and I'm pro the death penalty and I promote the death penalty, some company comes to me and says, we can kill people efficiently. And they then don't need to really like this. They don't need to me. Are you going to really seriously suggest that? You can tell why he's an award winner in Paris, don't you? You're obviously going to tell me there's no connection between an interest of that money coming towards you. We didn't have any. No, we didn't know that they were going to come and last with money. And there's one last thing. And this is something I think is actually very, very important but a bit tangenous. As a country, we did best when we had people, the merged adventurous class rather than the committee class. We have people who have to go out and invent stuff, travel around the world succeed.

1:03:22Do well. This is what made our country. Like I do for us. We'll play by the rules. Surely that's a very important situation. If you look in history, some of them didn't necessarily play by all of them. It's a nice, a lot of us. That's what made us. A lot of this. We've, I mean, we spent 15 minutes talking about the rights of wrongs, isn't isn't what may or may not happen. Ultimately, the public will decide if they feel this feels right. Do these donations feel like they pass a sniff test? Yeah. The public will decide that. It's within the law, certainly on face value at the moment, should the law be retrospectively changed? That feels dodgy as well. So the public will decide if they think 72 million pounds being donated over a weekend to a political party is the right or wrong thing to do, bearing in mind other donations that party have received and the question must be. Right. We will move on to some even more difficult subjects in just a moment. Cross question with Ian Dale on LBC, Tax Day 485O. Twenty-five state on LBC, let me reintroduce my panel, Harriet Cross, newly promoted as predicted by me,

1:04:22Conservative Shadow Scotland Secretary. I did, I did. Larger due to your opinion on this programme, I'm sure. And she's MP for Gordon and Bucken. Keir Mayther is Labour Transport Minister and MP for Selby. Great. Great. What decisions do you make? All sorts of important ones. What biscuits to have? What sort of tea? That sort of stuff. Did you decide to suspend Tim Montgomery? No. That's what the board decision is. Probably should have been, shouldn't it? There will be discussion. As you may have it is here, brilliant barrister, as we've already discovered, and broadcaster. Right. Martin says, and this is a question that I'm so glad I don't have to answer. How can we take action against AI when Trump is pushing ahead for it? What can the UK do to reduce the risk of human extinction? Now the President has posted about AI on his truth social platforms several times today, most recently writing this. AI taking over the world, destroying humanity and all other things bad is a hoax.

1:05:25No different from Russia, Russia, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine, impeachment, hoax number one, impeachment, hoax number two, and all the other hoaxes and scams that America was forced to endure through the destructionists and deviance foul play and illegal conduct. Trump has also said that AI doesn't need regulation. It just needs a smart president like him. Yeah, yeah. I don't know how expert any of you are on AI. I'm looking at you, Hashi, because I'm thinking you're possibly the most likely one. No, no, no. I definitely use AI for a lot of the stuff that we do that most of the legal professions now are engaged in it. It makes documents sifting infinitely easier. You can have hundreds of thousands of materials and then it will produce a grid for you to know everything and a footnote and the paragraph and the issue and everything. What I find remarkable is I've been using it for a year now and the amount of change and the speed with which it's getting better by the week is so scary.

1:06:35It is genuinely quite scary. But this stuff from the AI companies and the intervention I think is a bit of a smokescreen and into this extent I agree with Trump. They are completely over leveraged. They have completely exposed because they need all the new data centers, they need new chips and there's not enough to go around the market. So what I understand from the conversations I've been hearing from people in America is that they want a government intervention under the auspices ostensibly of saying we need regulation. In reality when that intervention hits it means that the contracts that they have bound themselves to that they cannot any longer afford would have to be used in a way that they can then say there's a force measure. That's what I think is happening right now. So Trump saying what he's saying in the way that he's saying it right now is an interesting challenge to them. We'll see how they react to it. Of course those of us that don't understand it particularly but maybe use it a little bit. We see this whistleblower from Anthropic last week predicting that AI could kill the human race within 10 years and we sort of sit up and think really and then we think,

1:07:44yeah but it's only one person saying that but it could be the canary in the coal mine care. Well one thing that we can't forget is that the UK is actually a leader in the world when it comes to our tech economy our digital economy and AI is an incredibly important part of that. You also see the enormous potential for AI to contribute in the medical profession across a range of applications. So there is enormous potential in AI and there's a lot of growth that's underpinned by the AI economy. The trade off there is that you have to maintain safety because people are rightly concerned that our sufficient guardrails in place. But also we want this thing to grow in a way which is regulated. Some of the stuff that we're doing is we've put a government minister around the cabinet table who is responsible for AI so that every decision is. He does know about it. He does. God he does not. So every time a government policy decision is made there is that lens of what are the implications for AI on this. How do we instill safety whilst also achieving growth? But just to give Harriet a bit of a shout out one of the best things the previous government did actually was set up the AI Safety Institute.

1:08:49And you know we can talk about swashbuckling regulation but actually having proper safety procedures and guardrails in place to monitor some of these systems is a form of value add in itself. So government is trying to be cautiously optimistic about AI's potential to transform our economy but also those safety guardrails need to be in place. And we've got well-renowned things. Honestly we are looked at as a real pioneer through things like the AI Safety Institute to make sure that we're using this technology in the right way but ultimately it's all about getting that balance right and maintaining people's sense of safety alongside realizing the opportunity. Yeah I mean I think we should we should recognize how much AI sort of at the different levels as well because I think AI means different things to different people. It means for some people just like helping research others it's the full sort of programming modeling sort of working on itself which completely different level. But for a lot of people it's really good for increasing efficiency businesses actually can really make the state more efficient which we know for example in the NHS if we can increase speed there it would be it would be a game changer.

1:09:52So it should be something we are embracing with the big butt of you need the proper safety rails and what are they. The AI Safety Institute as was mentioned was was a really important sort of thing on the way to this. It does need however to be something which everyone around the world is brought into and looking at because as with many technologies this does not stop at any border it goes it goes much much wider than that and is progressing so quickly. So there does need to be ways that if if people want to actually take the safety and the regulation of it seriously that does have to be done in a more unified way we know for example from President Trump's words and we know also from what China said today they are less inclined to do so. So it is that balance of actually how how do certain countries do this without for example the leaders in it doing it as well. But we shouldn't underestimate how much of a game changer could be for our industry but also obviously the difficulties of job losses or jobs not being created. Has she has already made about 10 people redundant given what he's been a lot of junior law is struggle.

1:10:55Yeah and that is a huge concern wider across the economy mean sort of those sort of entry level graduate level jobs used to be sort of the safeguard jobs goes you need you know you graduate job to go into and if those are the ones that you're falling away quickly and first it does change the entirely how we look at sort of recruitment the education system pathways into work. And I mean without going off topic too much first jobs gateway jobs are the really important ones actually to get people into the workforce and if the AI regardless of the safety side is impacting that then that's that's also a huge opportunity a huge issue about the government need to consider as well as will it will not end the world. And how much to you to as MPs and politicians use AI. I probably don't use it as much as I should I I I put things into co pilot at basically to ask a question. It's more to point me to whichever report I need to read and read it from there I do you would never think of using chat GPT to write a speech for you.

1:11:56I've never written a speech at GPT I'm sure I can't speak for everybody. But no I have not. Yes remaining silent. No no sir. I use AI for book recommendations and that's pretty much as far as I go. And but also politics is such like a job that relies on human interaction right like you've got to be able to look into the white people's eyes and make decisions based on trust and things that AI models can never fully get. You've got to get the parliamentary library on some sort of an artificial intelligence system the legal system have got their own that aren't available to the public. There should be one that that really document the great. Procedure in a way that would make your jobs a lot easier and end up a lot of people's jobs being going as well. Well well like most technologies we know before that as the technology starts we know what jobs are going to be lost. But we don't know what jobs are going to be created when it came to. And that's the internet so many more people are employed in say in your business in the business of news than were under the old hot led system.

1:12:59But many many more people are making their living through the internet and now I suspect that AI so we know we always know like the Luddites did what jobs would be lost. But we didn't know what jobs would be created. So I think some of our fear may be misplaced. That doesn't mean there isn't fear. I think one of the things the jobs that are mostly going to be lost are the dull ones. And if we can encourage people at school to be thinking much more as a like this is an opportunity for you to do this. I created an app it took me an hour. It does for me a brilliant piece of what I would have had to pay 10 grand and get somebody to do it took me an hour to do it. It was free. Through recommendations for beer and wine. No, it was something more serious. But it was about tendering processes and what tenders are coming up in local councils and things of this sort. So what are you doing your own time? Indeed. Well, I have my weird interest too. But the point is that yes, one, it's not going to stop whether we like it or not. Two, I hadn't thought of what you mentioned there.

1:14:00That was extremely interesting about how the companies themselves, I mean in previous booms, there's a well way boom. Everybody went bust but we had railways. Here we have a boom in AI. It goes bust and is out of date. Anytime it is gained. Anytime you see all four of them coming together. Well, when I hear big companies calling for regulations together, I look around and think where's the new entrance that dry kill. I was sent a link to something called Instinct the other day which I'd never heard of. I don't know. I just sort of chat GPT but a bit more. And I was told that three weeks ago that company was valued at somewhere between $100 and $200 million. Now it's valued at somewhere between $2 and $3 billion. Now there is clearly a bubble developing here in the AI field. And I just wonder what will happen if that bubble eventually bursts because somebody's just sent a text in saying, well, okay, if you could wipe out the human race through AI, how would it do it?

1:15:01Or because it would get control over basically everything somehow. I don't know. We're not all electronic right. I mean if you think about your car, you think about your house, you think about your lights, you think about your phones, you think about the computers that you're relying upon, you think about your medicine, you think about your contact with the outside world. Your pension, your pension, your benefit. All of that. So these days people are creating agents. The Hanna Fry, the scientist is really good on this and she talks a lot about this. People create agents to say go on a council's website and download for me all the credit and all the credit data for myself that worked for what I needed. Before you know it, it's going on to your Amazon and it's ordering 100 paper clips. But it's not what's more likely then. It's got access to your computer. Well, this instinct thing apparently can go into my Amazon account and check, do I have any subscription? If I do it can cancel them. Or it can order stuff for you. Yeah. Anthropics is being sued by hugging for hugging phase for accidentally entering their files and systems. So what were you going to say Harriet?

1:16:02No, no, that's fine. That's fine. Isn't what's more likely then a mass extinction event because of AI is a massive stock market crash and global recession. That is probably what needs to be much more concerned about because of the huge amount of capital or valuation in very, though, a few companies. Cross question with the endail. Watch live on our free global player app or the LBC app. 834 on LBC. Just in case you don't know, cross question is released as a podcast every night around 11 o'clock. So if you miss an episode you can catch up wherever you get your podcasts from. Now on our panel tonight we have Labour Transport Minister and MP for Selby Kear Mayther. Harriet Cross, Conservative Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland and MP for Gordon and Bucking. Grain Tolla, I always want to say Tallah because that's what I've called you for 20 years. It doesn't matter. Here's a member of a former UK's decision making board and Hashie Mohammed Barrister and Broadcaster. Right. Now, oh, Patti, Chris tells me the podcast will be out by 10 past nine.

1:17:06Yeah, but that encourages people to listen to that rather than the nine o'clock out. We have a good nine o'clock out tonight. A text question from Nicole in Sutton. Is Sydney Sweeney using her almost naked body to make money from sports betting adverts a sign of her own empowerment or just a demeaning move for any woman whoever wants to get into sports? Now a number of female athletes including British runner and newly crowned four time European champion Amy Hunt have hit out at American Actress Sydney Sweeney for appearing in Adverts for the US Sports Prediction Market Company Novic. In which she is almost naked but uses sports equipment to cover certain parts of her body. Sweeney has also invested her own money into this company. I'm going to admit I've never heard of the woman. Harriet, of course, as the only woman on that panel tonight I'm coming to you first. Well, I mean, why are you taking this? I mean, I would expect nothing. Why? Why not?

1:18:07This is a sort of story which I just cannot get interested in or emotional about. She is a grown woman. She can make her own decisions. Assuming she decided to take this contract, this work contract, and she did. And she hasn't been any way been forced to do what she's doing. I could not care less. And I understand why women in sport may feel like this. But it's not an advert to encourage women to do sport. It's for a company which is betting or marketing, whatever it is. It's a sports company but it's not sports participation. So I just can't get emotional about it. How should you get emotional about it? I mean, I can't get emotional about it as well. It's good to be a very quick one. Where I would slightly differ from where Harriet is though, is that I do think young girls in particular are hugely, hugely influenced by the social media, by things that they see. Is she very famous? She's pretty famous.

1:19:07And she's done other stuff before. She's actually quite known for having these kind of shock. American jeans. And the American jeans point where she was accused of eugenics and all sorts of other things. I could care less what she does to make money. But I do worry if you're a young girl or a father of a young girl and that comes across your feed and you somehow internalise that that's the way to success. That's the only quam I have about this. But that's more to do with advertising as an industry as opposed to the sports. Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. Just generally. But what she does is she gets paid for it good for her. And the fact is she will return her money. She'll certainly spend it. Yeah, she'll be starting money and she wants to get it back. But the marketplace for this advert is male. It's not female. It's sports betting. It's not a big female thing. It's a delivery. This is an advert delivery target of men. And it's working. And it's working. It's working. It's the complaints about it. I've could it in the garden. It's put it in the papers. So she's going to make her money back. Because everybody's got it up in arms. Well, Chris said to me when we were planning what we're going to do on the program tonight.

1:20:10Now, I'm not sure this is your thing. But she wants to do it. No, I don't care. I don't think the British public necessarily expects Labour ministers to be a pining on Sydney. Oh, good. So what I would say is like lots of British female athletes have spoken out about how they feel about this ad. And I think their points are pretty well made. The only kind of source of regret for me is that this is put a lens on an entire question about women's participation in sport, which should be one about empowerment and how successful and the growth that we've seen in women's partition sport in the UK. And instead, we're talking about this. I think that's a bit of a shame because you see the enormous difference that it makes in communities like mine right across the country. Kind of wish that was more of a focus. And I think actually that's what a lot of these British female athletes who are speaking about the ad are kind of getting at. This is taking away our opportunity to talk about the facts that participation in sport can be fantastic for women and girls. And I kind of wish that we were centred more on that than chatting about it.

1:21:12So to the extent the fact that they've responded to it is all about that. And if this advert hadn't gone out today, yesterday there was the athletics. That was great. Today, they weren't talking about that. Today, they've had an opportunity to talk about and the banging that message home. So actually, they've had more because of this ridiculous advert. They've had more opportunity to talk about that empowerment you're talking about. Those successes that so in a weird way, it has actually encouraged that discussion. Well, let's encourage another discussion show because I think we've had enough of that one. Kaz in Luton says, which of the nations of the UK will end up leaving first? Why shouldn't it be England? The first ministers of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have met today and declared that the UK government in Westminster shouldn't be allowed to get in the way of their nations' desires to become independent at some point in the future. It's like factual thing there and that none of the populations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have ever voted to leave anyway. Let's start with you.

1:22:12Well, look, it's perfectly obvious why the leaders of the nations have gotten together today and as nationalist politicians have said what they've said. But personally, I don't think they could be more wrong. People seem to think that young people in particular are disinterested about these questions about Britishness. I think absolutely the opposite is true. I'm a young person in politics. I'm extremely proud to be British. I think those ties of culture, of family, of community. Does this pay for people not watching and listening? How old are you? I'm 28. So I'm fairly, fairly fresh. I'll get you over 21. Oh, smile me. You smile me. But there's a couple of things going on here. One is that those ties are so incredibly deep and they mean so much to people. But there's also another lens that I don't think we talk enough about when we talk about the future of our union. I do with class as well and it's something that Gordon Brown used to speak a lot about. I grew up in whole, both my grandparents from the merchant navy, one bill, ships on time side. I personally feel I've got a lot more in common with the son of a steel worker from Patelba or somebody who used to work in the auto sector in Glasgow.

1:23:20Then I necessarily do with other people. I think those bonds are incredibly deep across the United Kingdom. I don't believe there is an enormous appetite for it. Perfectly understand why these politicians have done it. But I think it's at the wrong moment. And especially it feels a bit sad because we've now got a Prime Minister in Downing Street, whose entire focus, the reason that they've been in politics, driving changes because they want to push power out of Westminster and down into local communities. And that's in every postcode in the UK and Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland. So I wish that leaders have devolved administration to see that as what I believe it is, that there's enormous opportunity to improve communities across the United Kingdom for the better. Do you think there is a danger as Ollie is just texting him who says independence for Kerno Cornwall? I mean, if... Where does it end? What exactly? I mean, there's a Yorkshire independence movement. Oh, there's a Yorkshire independence party. It's not that we find within the United Kingdom. What I ultimately think it's about is people have got this desire to be heard and they have a desire for respect. And if you take a place like Cornwall, it deserves a fair look in when it comes to transport connectivity.

1:24:24People that want to revive their mining sector, which has fallen away, they want more jobs, they want more opportunity. And ultimately, they want to be heard. And that's exactly what this Prime Minister is interested in trying to achieve for people. So the onus is on the government. We've got to deliver. We've got to deliver change for people, push power out of Westminster. And hopefully if people can feel that change in their lives, A, because cost of living pressures are re-ease, so they can breathe a bit more easily. But also because they feel like political power is closer to them and actually things start to function and work in their interest. I think that is the best antidote to some of this hopelessness that we've seen. Alright. Well, as a... As a Scottish Conservative and Unionist party MP, it won't surprise anyone to hear that I do not want to see any part of the UK break away. A lot of this has come, certainly this week after Andy Burnham's answer at PIMQ's last week, where he for some reason decided to equate the position in Northern Ireland with Scotland and effectively save at an opinion poll here or there could allow for another Scottish independence referendum,

1:25:26which is factually and absolutely untrue. The nationalist leaders today in Cardiff, certainly from a Scottish perspective, what they are doing is again and again, just focusing on this one hobby horse, it's one obsession they have of independence because it allows them to completely turn away and look away from the disaster, in some cases, that they have caused in whichever part of the UK they are responsible for. So in Scotland, I mean, we've got the highest drug deaths in Europe, waiting lists in the NHS are out of control. Last week we saw again that education standards are falling, infrastructure projects are not being built in Scotland, where the highest tax part of the UK is being re-elected. So why does the SMP keep being re-elected? That is a good question, but it's also for us also. Because your party and the Labour Party are useless. Well, in the Scottish Parliament elections. Obviously, I was changing you as leader. In the Scottish Parliament elections this May, John Swinney went in saying, if the SMP won a majority of seats, that's going to be a mandate for independence. Well, their vote share went down by about 10%,

1:26:28and they lost, I can't remember exactly, 6 or 7 seats compared to last time. So their support is falling. I mean, we have... There will be other greens in who believe in independence and they've got majority. But they're not. That was not the mandate, but John Swinney said was the answer. And if you ask 10 green voters what they believe in, you're going to get 10 different answers. You do not have a single party going into election in Scotland with a manifesto, which is one page that says vote for us for independence full stop. That's not the position. Everyone will make their own goalposts move around in order to fit the solution they want. But for the time being, this remains a distractions tactic by John Swinney, by the SMP, so they don't have to talk about what they're actually responsible for. Don't mind to bring... I do, I do. I do. I do. I think reformed it quite well in Scotland in comparison to the Dories in the last Holy Reel elections. And I think there's a very strong, unist bent there. I think part of the problem... Which is odd, Kibbun, that you believe in independence? We do believe in independence. People wishing they can have... I'm not going to stop it.

1:27:28I'm not going to stop it. It's also said that this difference is not unreasonable. If people want something they're allowed to say they want it, that's fine. I've got no problem with people saying they want it. I just don't think people in Scotland, Wales and all of them are undisputed. I think there's no evidence to suggest they do. But I think part of the problem with this is we've lost faith in ourselves. And we've had too long where Britain is denigrated. The UK is denigrated. It is generally seen as an embarrassment. And so why shouldn't people think, well, if people in the UK don't believe in the UK, so why should we not be centrifugal and move away? I think that is wrong. I think I need to change. I agree with what Kibbun was saying. I do. And actually, I agree with you, Harris. I think we are all unionist politicians here. I don't know about yourself. But we are. And we believe very strongly in that united kingdom. And I think it offers far more together than it ever would in constituent parts. And the idea these countries think that they can leave the UK and then go into Europe. This is the weirdest form of independence I've ever heard of in my life.

1:28:31I think it's interesting that when you hear government ministers who go, I don't know how much trouble you do, Kibbun. But heard Ed Millibans say this the other day that sort of all of the people that he talks to in other countries, they have a hugely higher opinion of the United Kingdom. Oh, I see. But we specialise in doing that. I know. My view is that the cautionary tale of the disaster that was Brexit should be what these countries and these foreign nations should understand as to the consequences of what could be. For me, the answer is very simple. Decentralise more to give more power to these countries. It's a cautionary tale to think that you can go it along, go it alone and be absolutely fine. England remains the largest and in many ways the richest part of the United Kingdom. London, particularly, yes. London in particular. And Trump's comments this weekend didn't help. Do you remember what he said about Ireland as well? You nod your hands. So for me, it makes no sense in this really critical time when we've left the European Union to then break us up even further. That just doesn't make sense. Okay. And the Scottish Government is setting up 39 diplomatic embassies abroad.

1:29:33It's not their business. And it's an awful lot of cost. Alan says, why haven't you got anyone from the SMP plied or shinfane on for balance? Well, because we didn't know this question was coming up. And we do often have people from the SMP and plied on the programme, shinfane less so. Let's not go there. Cross question with India on LBC. 851 on LBC. Green Turl at Harriet Cross, Hashim Muhammad and Kiermey that with us. Kier, before we come to the next question, you're the Aviation Minister. What did happen last week with air traffic control? And should the Nazi Chief Executive Martin Rolf should he be looking for a new job now? That's what the Ryan Airbus Michael O'Leary thinks should happen. Yeah. So last week there was widespread disruption across the United Kingdom. It was caused by a software fault that's part of Natt's sister. So nothing to do with one military jet? Not as far as I'm aware. But the point is that what we saw in airports across the United Kingdom

1:30:34was totally and utterly unacceptable. People expect better. The reason that it took a few hours for those systems to come back on the road is because Natt's primary focus, the sole thing that it needs to be more conscious of than anything else, is aviation safety. And they needed to make sure that they could restart flying in as safe a way as possible, as quickly as possible. In regards to what happens next, the Secretary of State for Transport, Adele Alexander, has said that she wants a report on her desk by Wednesday, specifically outlining from Natt's what the fault was so that next steps can happen. The CAA has also been tasked with carrying out a broader review over six months to get to the hearts of the problem. A, we need to stop software glitches like this, minimise the chance that they can happen again to the greatest extent possible. Ultimately, though, this is about a programme of technological change at Natt, which needs to be expedited as quickly as possible. These systems, you know, the UK takes a disproportionate share of Europe's aviation capacity. We manage incredibly congested and busy airspace, and we're trying to do things to improve that, like airspace modernisation.

1:31:36But ultimately, the British public don't expect this level of disruption. It's uprooted people's experience of flying in it needs to be improved. Adele Alexander was clearly very angry when she made that statement of the House of Commons last week. Is it within her power? Is it within your power to fire the head of Natt's? So, Natt says privatised company. The UK government owns 49% of it. The Secretary of State doesn't have it. That happened under Tony Blair, I think, didn't it? Sure, quite possibly, but the Secretary of State doesn't have direct powers to do what you suggest. Ultimately, we need to get to the bottom of what's happened. And, you know, people can be flippant and say, oh, another software issue. Ultimately, these systems are incredibly complex, and at the heart of it is aviation safety. So, we need to figure out what went wrong so that we can minimise disruption in the future because thousands of people have been affected in the worst way possible. But ultimately, we need to keep people safe, and we've got a formidable safety record in the UK when it comes to our aviation sector, but we need to protect it long into the future. And that's what this will allow us to find out. But in the end, the buck has to stop with someone,

1:32:37and it either stops with Heidi Alexander and you, or it stops with the head of Natt's. And if it doesn't stop with him, who does it stop with? Well, our job in the department for transport is to work with the CA as the arms-length body, and with Natt's to fix this problem and make it better. It's probably worth saying that Martin Rolfen, his team, but actually all the people who work at Natt's are working incredibly hard to get to the bottom of exactly what this fault was and to figure out how it could be minimised in the future. And down at that centre in Swanwick, where those Natt staff work, they were doing a phenomenal amount of work to make sure that the system could be restarted safely. But ultimately, there does have to be accountability. We have to make sure this doesn't happen again, but we can't begin the process of what comes next until we figure out exactly what the fault was so that we can respond to it effectively. Right, Alistair Incombrius says, David Blunkett says Labour needs a reset with the countryside after all the rouse about the inheritance tax reforms and plans to ban trail hunting. Does Westminster as a whole just not understand rural Britain? Well, the former home secretary has appeared as an event organised by the countryside alliance,

1:33:41which is called for a rural reset to take place. Lord Blunkett has called the farms inheritance tax policy a mistake. The threshold for it was originally set at £1 million, but then raised to £2.5 million last December. But Blunkett has said today that Andy Berne will understand the continued anger about this policy very clearly and acted accordingly. Will Harriet, you have a very rural constituency? Your comments? Yeah, no, I do have an incredibly rural constituency. I've always lived very rural as well. And before being elected, I was at rural surveyor working with farmers and the state owners. So I like to think, Alistair, that I do understand rural Britain at least a little bit. What Labour did in their first budget with the inheritance tax reforms, the changes to agricultural and business property relief, has sent short ways through rural communities, which is very hard to put into words. But we see in feel sort of every time we speak to our farmers and our rural business owners.

1:34:44It wasn't just that. Of course, it was also the fertiliser tax, the double-carb, pick-up tax. There was many, many costs put on our farmers and farming communities. And they're left trying to pick up the pieces. It's an industry, I'm talking about farming, I appreciate this more to rural areas than that. But farming is an industry which makes tiny, tiny margins if at all. And they just don't have any room to burden excess costs. And for the government to keep putting more costs on them, and basically, shrug off their concerns as sort of just having to get on and deal with it, is not the right approach. And I know you also mentioned trail hunting in your question. It's just another example of an industry which for some rural areas is really important, because it's not just the people involved, it's the suppliers and contractors, the businesses which relate to it. And ecosystems, I mean that by sort of the economy sort of side, in rural areas are very interconnected. A lot of the businesses rely on each other for contracting from one to the other for employment. And if these start to break down, you do suddenly find in rural areas

1:35:47that there is so few other employment opportunities that the whole area starts to decline. So if Labour do reset whatever that means, their relationship with the countryside, it will be welcome. I do fear that they've lost so much trust however, but that's going to be very hard for them to rebuild. But any changes that come will be very welcome, and particularly to the family farm tax. Hashi, on this inheritance tax question, I mean I think it's a very difficult one. Rural communities are facing a huge amount of challenges. I'm a planning lawyer, so I actually spend a lot of time in these communities of people who are trying to release their land for development in order to actually get some... There is a common misconception that people who own massive estates and massive land are filthy rich and they've got lots of... But they might be asset rich, but they're really cash poor. And many of them will be allowing for land to be inherited in order to be able to pass something on to their kids. I think it needs to be a proportionate response to ensure that we get money into the coffers,

1:36:49but you can't really work that if you don't understand the consequences for the past. Okay, brief answers from Kate and Greg, please. Well, I'm also very proud to represent a rural constituency. I think building those bonds more strongly means that you have to be responsive in the moment. Those immediate pressures that pop up, so the sport that we gave to rural communities on heating oil and the wake of what happened in the straights of Moses, a good example. One thing that people get wrong though is thinking that issues that affect everyday Britons don't seem to reach out into rural communities. And I actually think having a £2 bus fare cab, giving people some breathing room when it comes to that on their energy bills, makes as much of a difference in rural communities as it does in urban ones. But also there is a point around the farming community of making sure that we are demonstrating that we get it. The Prime Minister has been really conscious of that. It's why on the inheritance tax policy we ultimately ended up changing course, but we're also going a lot further on things like tackling rural crime, tackling illegal waste dumping. The things that are just grit in the system of farmers being able to get on with the amazing work that they do. So across the range of issues, we're doing our best to get this right.

1:37:51Greg, one of the things I've seen in the last year that has concerned me great is the tokenisation of the countryside. There was this great report that was produced about how the entire countryside is now tokenised. And the idea from the Ministry and from the government was that it was decide what is good for the countryside. So is this going to be about environment? Is this going to be about energy production? And the carpeting, I live near Milksham. And the Lime Down Plan is opposed by the Lib Dems, it's opposed by everybody, but it's not seems to be opposed by the Minister and they're going to carpet a huge area of productive land in a solar array. This is a part of the problem. The government has decided that the countryside is now, it is not owned by the farmers, it is now a tokenised thing that is there as part of government policy. And this is extremely concerning. I'm not an expert in rural affairs, but I do find this, and it goes to the digitisation, it goes to the aynus of everything, of what we were talking before. And I think it's a complete change of system for the countryside,

1:38:52and I'm very, very concerned by it. Right, finally our fun question from Maxon Mabel Thorpe in North Lincolnshire. Scientists say a pack of African wild dogs has travelled nearly two and a half thousand miles across Sambo in search of a mate. What's the most arduous, selfless thing you've done for a loved one? Humble brag away, says Max. Going, I moved to Glasgow. Nobody comment on that because it's banned to end in tears, Harriet. I'm going to turn it around, not so much what I've done, but my poor husband, when I left my car keys in my flat in London recently, drove to the airport to collect me, and it was only late at night and I very much appreciated it, so that's probably not really a humble brag, but I'll give him some humble brag for that. And it shows a level of incompetence on your whole. I'm willing to accept that. I'm afraid I'm going to have to be a terrible politician and turn it around as well. I've got some serious special interests in particular things,

1:39:54and one of them is Ice Hockey, and my long-suffering partner has recently gone to a game in Glasgow with me to watch the Glasgow call and play. And I absolutely loved it, so that was some real selfless thing. It's not really taken off in this country, has it? I'll tell you afterwards, you'll be around. OK, fresh driving almost an hour and a half to hand somebody a side table that was sold by your other half on Amazon, and sorry, Facebook Marketplace, at night, cost the tenor, standing in a car park and saying, here you go, I'm delivering this to you after having driven for two hours. It's like glamorous life as a tourist, isn't it? Thank you all very much indeed for being on the panel this evening on Tomorrow's panel. Labour MP Alex Ballinger, conservative shadow energy security minister, Dr Luke Evans, business sector campaigner Ros Morgan, plus the investigative journalist Ellie Flynn. This is LBC, from Global, leading Britain's conversation with Ian Dyle.

1:41:01It is six minutes past nine, welcome to if you've just joined the programme. Now, according to her majesty's daily telegraph today, Kemi Badernaucus, considering abolishing inheritance tax and could make an announcement at the Conservative Party's Autumn Conference next month. The Tory leader, Andrew Griffith, a new shadow chancellor, have both signalled they favour tax cuts, but no decisions have been finalised as they work out the costs. Now, officials may clear that they would not propose any tax cuts that were not fully costed or that would undermine the party's credibility. As Fiskily, responsible, well early this month, Kemi Badernaucus announced her £10 billion plan to raise defence spending to 3% of GDP by 2030. She said she wanted to cut all sorts of taxes. Inheritance tax is high on my list, but we are the party of fiscal responsibility. So I've instructed my economic unit to bring me a plan as to what we can do responsibly.

1:42:02Now, if you think back to 2007, George Osborne announced in his party conference speech a shadow chancellor that he would want to either... I think he wanted to raise the income, the inheritance tax threshold, to a million pounds from 325,000. And that, in a sense, was enough to spook Gordon Brown into not calling an election that autumn, which if he had called it, he would have almost certainly won it and our whole history would have been different because there wouldn't have been an election until 2012, there wouldn't have been Brexit referendum. So these kinds of decisions can actually have long-term consequences. But let's concentrate on the desirability or non-desirability of abolishing inheritance tax. Now, there is one view, and it's the one I hold, that inheritance tax is effectively double taxation. The argument against that is, well, no, because that money hasn't yet been taxed because it's received by somebody who has bequeathed it by the person who paid tax on it originally.

1:43:07Are you with me at the back? I've never really bought that argument because taxation has been paid on that money. And I've never believed in any form of double taxation. So just on that basis, I think it should go. If you are against it, against abolishing it, you will no doubt say, well, where would you get the money from? Well, I haven't got the latest figures here, but certainly the last time I saw it, it raises somewhere between £3 and £4 billion a year, which in the wider scheme of things is not a huge amount. I mean, as it is a large amount of money, but when you have a budget of £1.3 trillion, you ought to be able to find those savings from somewhere else in the budget, or you put up another tax. I don't know. Personally, I would try and find spending savings. So have you been affected in an adverse way, as your family been affected in an adverse way by inheritance tax?

1:44:07Do you think that this is a vote winner, or do you think most people will think, well, hang on, it's not going to affect me, it only affects 5% of a state. Although I'm unlikely to be affected by it. Although given house prices at the moment, I'm not sure that's necessarily the case. Well, Dr Pfizer Shaheen joins me, executive director of the Tax Justice UK campaign, and I'm assuming Pfizer, you really disagree with me on this. Otherwise, we wouldn't have got you on, but when you saw Chemibadenac is reputably or reportedly going to do, what's your initial reaction to it? Well, in some ways, I'm not surprised. I think that for a lot of people, they look at inheritance tax, and you know, it's one of those things that people don't understand. People often think that they're going to have to pay tax, but as you've just said, very few people do. Less than 5% of a state's end-up pain, any kind of inheritance tax. And actually, the very richest often make sure they give their gifts seven years before they die.

1:45:09They put it in trusts, so they don't actually end up paying any tax, any inheritance tax. But, you know, it's still billions of pounds, about six billion actually, as far as I understand. And that is something. So you do have to find somewhere else that that's come to come from. But I think for people like me that work on inequality and wealth inequality, and we see that so much wealth is concentrating at the very top of society without a plan for how you tax wealth. We are going to make a number of things worse in this country, including the ability of children born to lower income families to ever get on the housing ladder, for instance. So, you know, it's, can we burn or not might come out with this? You might think it's popular, and she needs to get attention for obvious political reasons. But this is a policy that I think is irresponsible in terms of ignoring severe and growing wealth inequality in this country in addressing issues like social mobility in this country.

1:46:11And I think if she wants to be taken more seriously, she needs to have a plan for wealth inequality. So if you're going to get rid of inheritance tax, what are you going to do about the fact that there is so much wealth accumulating? And I do want to address your point about double taxation because I was thinking about my own parents who, you know, we paid inheritance tax on their estate and say like someone like my dad that bought his house in Wolfenstow in the late 80s at the time when Wolfenstow in East London was not a nice place to live in people who didn't want to live in. I bought a flat in Wolfenstow in the late 1980s and lived to regret it. Well, I mean that house now is worth. So it was, you know, about 18,000 pounds, I think when he got it and, you know, I think is worth about 800,000 pounds now. Like he actually didn't pay tax on that in a sense. Yes, council tax, but he maybe invested a hundred grand in that house over time. Certainly grew in value, but not because of anything necessarily that he'd done. It was because of the way that house price inflation is worked in London.

1:47:17So, you know, I think when it comes to paying taxes, it's fair then that that wealth is tax at a particular level. And it's fair that the next generation of people inheriting that tax, inheriting that house that pay some tax on it. I think it comes down to this and this is an argument that's not often made. We have to remember why we pay taxes. Now, it's been a lot of time in countries and working with countries where there's not a serious tax system. And they don't have the schools we have, they don't have the NHS we have. I don't know about where you live, but where I live over the summer, you know, the bridges, the bridges is closed. The water has been insane. People have lost water to their houses over the summer. The hospital locally is dilapidated and needs rebuilding. We need money in this country. So, I think it is really irresponsible to come out with tax cuts like this that might get you attention. But really at this point we should be thinking about how to raise more money and raise more money from people that can afford to pay it. People on your side of the tax debate often quote Scandinavian countries as sort of models of what we should aspire to be in terms of a welfare state.

1:48:25But I've just typed into chat GPT, list me all the countries that don't have inheritance tax, and Norway and Sweden are among them. Now, I'm sure they have other taxes which are much higher than ours. But I think that is quite interesting that I mean they're not the only ones quite a lot of Eastern European countries don't have a multi-dozoned, Georgia, Cyprus, Austria doesn't. And other countries like Australia, Canada and New Zealand, they don't have an inheritance tax as such, but they have a sort of stamp duty but close family members are exempt from that. So everybody's got a different system. Why do you think ours is the one that others should aspire to copy, or maybe you think there is a better system in some other country? I wouldn't say that our tax system in this country is one to aspire to copy. No, I mean I think if you look across the board, even something like this is a very richist avoid it. Unfortunately our tax system is rigged in favor of the richest in this country and people feel very angry about that because people are the people are paying their fair share.

1:49:28And especially on income tax where the very richest aren't. So if you take a country like Norway that did get rid of their inheritance tax but they do have a wealth tax for instance. So I would be able to take this far more seriously from but not as a plan serious plan for this country in terms of investing in public services in terms of addressing inequality. If she had another plan by which we would tax wealth fairly because currently people with wealth are tax that much lower rates than people in terms of their income. And we don't have a choice about it goes out of our pay packet every month whereas the very wealthiest seem to be able to play tax on a voluntary basis. What do you regard as the very wealthiest? Well I mean I think you can look at I think percentages make most sense. So you know for me you can look at the top 10% you look at the top 5% and you look at the top 1%. If you look over the time of what's happened in wealth inequality in this country and it's concentrated more and more at this top 1% and this is why we put forward a plan for instance like others in this country in a board about say a 2% tax for those with over 10 million pounds.

1:50:38I think 10 million pounds for most of us is like beyond anything we could ever comprehend right and then that 2% tax is applied on anything over 10 million. So actually for that kind of sums of money those people are sitting on assets that are making far more than 2% a year in terms of the asset growth. So you actually just paying a tax on your profit. So they're already paying a tax on their profit. I mean the problem here is that I think they came out last week figures showed that the top 1% of income earners pay 29% of the whole of income tax. Well I mean and that's the difference right income versus wealth and and you look at say an inheritance tax a very like I said the very rich is stone pay inheritance tax what they do I don't know if you've heard about this particular scheme that they have which is called by borrow dye. So what you do is you buy those assets you borrow against assets you put assets in trusts in tax havens and British jurisdictions and when you die those are passed on to your children and this is what I mean is something inherently unfair about our tax system right now when normal working class and middle class people are paying their taxes in income and yes even people 100 grand 200 grand in terms of income are paying you know a sizable amount of of tax and there's a big difference between you know earning 200 grand a year.

1:51:59And having 10 million pounds of wealth and that's really where we want to correct things that difference between what you pay on income versus wealth. Well it goes back to the old arguments that we had sort of 10 years ago about a mansion tax doesn't it where you can be asset rich you can on paper be incredibly wealthy but actually you're not cash rich so I mean you're 2% that I mean I can see the logic of what you're saying. But if you live say through no fault of your own you bought a house in the 1930s or your family bought a house in May fair you bought it as your example in Northam so you bought it for say 50,000. And I thought we're over 10 million. No no no but it would be in May fair it would be in May fair yet you haven't got the assets to pay that 2% each year but I hear what you say fires the thank you very much indeed that's not to fires us Shaheen executive director of the tax justice UK campaign. Is this something that would win your vote just on its own because I think there was a time when this would have been an actual vote winner and golden brown certainly thought it was out otherwise he would have called an election in 2007.

1:53:03But if Kimmy Badernaukshire announced last year the abolition of stamp duty which I think a lot of people think is licensed robbery well this year she is reportedly going to announce the abolition of inheritance tax. Would that get your vote and if not why not. And eligibility criteria apply or mortgages are subject to application financial circumstances and borrowing history season to apply you barkies mortgage applications only. This is LBC with e and a call 0 345 6060 973. Twenty past nine on LBC I'm going to be it's going to be really trusting for me to see the level of calls in the South because when I've done inheritance tax phonies in the past you just have to mention the phrase and you have a media full switchboard. I'm not so sure this is one of those touchstone issues nowadays but I may be proved wrong let's go to Simon is in San Jose in California. Hello Simon. Good morning good afternoon. Hi. What would you like to tell us.

1:54:03So I'm I'm a dual sister I've born in the I was born in the UK a couple of years younger than you I think moved to the US in 2008. I'm an off sort of sons who's about to go off to college. When I left the U. P. I was not specially wealthy but working here in Silicon Valley. My wife and I have made quite a bit of money and I'm now in a situation where I cannot consider moving back to the U. P. even if I wanted to because the tax bill the inheritance tax bill that we would have at the point of that many. I think that goes down to my son would be ridiculous. And that actually also means if my son is about to go off to university for the same reason you're not going to go to university in case it's not going to start working in the U. P. because again if he went there with me there and we hit this massive tax bill that living here in the US where the inheritance tax limit is I think 30 million or so we don't have.

1:55:12But I mean maybe your son is in the UK would quite like his parents to move back to the UK and they're in their do it. Yeah but when you're talking about the size of tax bill that we've got it's very very hard for us to just try and like I say the result is that he he would probably he probably wouldn't consider moving back to the UK. And if you're a citizen either you know we basically it here saying well we're stuck in the US no matter what we want is sort of well look at it which we should a little bit fail. I've got three brothers in the UK my parents still alive just about I've got friends in the UK but financially it's just not something we. Are you saying that all other things being equal if we didn't have an inheritance tax at all that you would actually move back to the UK. Yeah absolutely I mean the UK is a great place in many ways I enjoy visiting it when I get the chance.

1:56:20The idea of moving back to the UK spending our money in the UK traveling around Europe on short trips you know there's most trip most international trips in the US are much longer trips. Yeah yeah would be quite attractive you know and for my son you know we should debate the situation with politics here in the US you know a certain part of me would like my son to not be in the US given the way the US is just at the moment as well. But financially it just it becomes incredibly hard to even consider it in the current situation which is a shame I think. Okay Simon thank you very much Peter says in normally I would agree with you but there are far more unfair taxes than inheritance tax and as a time of crisis with the cost of living I'm staggered you're seeking to increase the wealth divide. Fiscal drag is an absolute outrage that relatively poor families are being dragged into high taxation brackets. I personally also disagree intensely with the 60% tax trap that pay a PAYE tax pay it's fall into as soon as they earn £100,000 which are a family of four as a single income is not actually a lot of money anymore if you have a mortgage to be paying 60% on top.

1:57:36Peter I don't actually disagree with you there. I think this whole idea of fiscal drag where so many more people are paying the 40% rate all the 45% rate now compared to five or 10 years ago and I do blame the Conservatives because they're the ones that started this Rachel Reeves continued with it and I hope in the budget John Healey will announce that is going to stop because it is absolutely an equitance that you should have to pay 40% of your income when you only earn £50,000 a year. Which is not that much above the average wage high tax rate should be for people who earn a lot more than average and 50,000 which when I was growing up 50,000 pounds would have seemed an absolute fortune but when the average wage now is somewhere in the high 30,000s you're not rich if you're on 50,000 a year. So why should you have to pay 40% of your salary in tax plus of course national insurance. So Peter I think you're onto something there if I was Chancellor and I had the choice of helping people avoid being in the 50% tax, 40% tax bracket I think I would probably be tempted to do that rather than abolishing income tax.

1:58:50But on the other hand, if you're a leader of the opposition, it's actually quite difficult to get big massive newspaper headlines and to but to announce something as I catching as abolishing attacks, whether it's income tax or stamp duty at your party conference. I mean I can see why she would be tempted to do that and we're hoping to do a phone with Kenny Bader not in the next couple of weeks so we can one of you can put that to her if that comes off. Right Peter is in leads. Hello, I just wanted to pick up on the point from your from your first caller your expert and really say that I fundamentally disagree that even a level of 10 million whatever the level is. It's not about the level it's about saying that this is taxation at to your point that that's already been factored in and someone's in someone's life. The other point is that we are a level of taxation in this country that's the highest it's been since World War II. I don't think there's been a period of time where we've had higher levels of taxation.

1:59:57So we comment where that she made that we need to bring more taxes in it's fundamentally wrong. We don't have a problem with taxes. We have a problem with spending and how those taxes are distributed throughout our society when she's causing these issues that obviously are happening in our local area. I don't disagree that those may be issues but I think we need to look at how the money and where the money is being spent not increase in taxes beyond the level because clearly if we're taking in taxes at a level that we've never seen before in our generations then there's fundamentally a problem with how we're spending it and you know I'm someone who's grown up you know done well for himself but I didn't start that way. I had to take risks. I started off. I lived in poverty. I grew up in foster care. I made choices. I took risk risk my life and I have done well for myself but fundamentally that doesn't work out for a lot of people and for inheritance tax whether it be wealth taxes or inheritance taxes.

2:00:59I've already paid 60% of income over 100,000 pounds. Okay so the idea that people are sitting there with vast sums of money that they're squirreling away as your expert so called that there are these schemes that people are signing up to. That's simply not the case. I fundamentally don't agree with that and it's middle class people who are hardworking who are going to suffer the brunt of these inheritance taxes in the years to come. The biggest thing that hasn't been mentioned on this whole debate is about how pensions will be factored into inheritance tax calculations from next year. That is going to fundamentally change the landscape because people's pensions who are thinking that they are factored into their calculations of how they will be living in their old age. If they die suddenly their families are going to have to figure out how to pay off the inheritance tax calculations based upon pension schemes that they might not have access to. So this whole idea that inheritance tax is somehow this easy pot of money that people can just dip into when somebody dies is fundamentally wrong and there's this idea that's been kind of pushed that people sit on these pots of money.

2:02:12Inheritance tax takes into account property it takes into account other assets. These assets might not be liquid assets but in the calculations for inheritance tax families are having to to to frog things in order to pay this level of taxation. It's fundamentally wrong. Fundamentally wrong. I don't have an issue with paying taxes. I have an issue with paying double taxes and paying this death tax which doesn't account for the people's risk that they've taken over their life and other taxes. It depends who are at their entire working life. Well you've put it far more eloquently than I have. I agree with every word you've said there. And I think it is understandable why people seek to avoid inheritance tax when they die because they feel that they've contributed to society. They've paid their requisite taxes and why should if they've been successful in life, if they've built up a property portfolio or whatever, that money should go to whoever they want to leave it to. Now I don't have children. I will have to pay inheritance tax or my success as well on my state in some way or my executors will.

2:03:22If somebody came to me tomorrow and said, right, this is a way that you wouldn't have to pay inheritance tax on your estate. I would look at it very seriously. I wouldn't think that I was doing anything unethical. I wouldn't think I was doing anything immoral because the state has had quite a lot of my money over the years and I don't want them to want it to have any more. And I agree and I think there's a misconception that's been pushed now with the government that we have that tax avoidance is an evil that is the same as tax evasion. If you read a lot of what has been what's been given in the media tax avoidance is bad. It's not tax avoidance is simply careful planning it's saying I'm not going to do this or I'm going to make choices in life. Tax evasion is absolutely thing that the government should stand for. But I think this whole debate is being wrapped up in this idea that people are avoiding taxes in a way that's kind of doing the system out of paying for hospitals and paying for teachers and things like that.

2:04:26Taking out an iso is avoiding tax. If we really want to reduce it to that level, Peter, thank you very much indeed. It's 934 on LBC we're talking about inheritance tax. Tommy Badenock is reportedly going to announce that she would abolish it if the conservatist won the next election. And yes, you can laugh and say, of course the Conservatives aren't going to win the next election. Well, stranger things have happened in our politics over the last 10 years. You can't rule anything out. But is this something that would get your vote that will persuade you to vote conservative maybe in a way that you hadn't ever considered doing over the past few years. That is the first time call it in Chelmsford. Simon, very good evening. What would you like to say? Hi, and so I've been sorting out parents. Well, yeah, he stayed for quite a few years, my father died first and then my mother died a few years later.

2:05:32I've been dealing with the will as an executor. As an executor, you don't at the time you don't realize how much responsibility you have. Especially with the inheritance tax, I mean, some of you call was mentioned before that asset rich, but not everyone's cash rich. So when comes to paying the inheritance tax, you have to find the money. So in our case, we had to borrow the money and then also we have a property overseas as well. Parents had a property overseas and managed to sell that and then obviously we've had to disclose that with HMRC as well because overseas properties have to be disclosed via HMRC and all that. So that's been a headache in itself. And that wasn't sold at the valuation price, even though we had to pay inherited tax on the valuation price and we sold it at a lower price. So we've had to sort of basically unfair, isn't it? Yes, it is unfair. But and then on top of that, if you don't get all of your code zekers, that can for a spanner in the works as well.

2:06:42Yes, I was executor to my father's because my mother died in 2012. My father died in 2016 and my sisters and I, my two sisters and I were co-executors of the will. And I mean, that can lead to, I mean, we haven't had massive fallings out over it. But if you have any disagreement about any sort of minor thing, it can sort of blow up into something that you wouldn't have necessarily expected. That's right. Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, I'm strange for my siblings now because of all this. Really? Yeah. And on top of that, sort of, we didn't really get time to agree with my mother. So, yeah, it's been a bit of a whirlwind and it's, as I said, it's still ongoing. Well, I'm really sorry to hear that because, I mean, I haven't fallen out with my sisters, but there have been one or two occasions, which I think they would probably agree that we have, should we say disagreed about some of the details?

2:07:48There we go. That's what families are for, I suppose. But I mean, in the end, I think, well, every, if you're in that situation, you've got to think, well, what would my mother and my dad have thought about this? They wouldn't want you to have fallen out with your siblings. And at some point, one of you is going to have to make the first move because you'd, I mean, they're your blood. That's true, but I mean, sort of, there was interest to pay because the sort of the state dragged on a bit and we have to pay interest on the inheritance tax. And it was looking at a sort of substantial amount of inheritance tax interest because we didn't have enough money to pay for the actual inheritance tax itself. So, you know, there was turn from in throwing with the other coexects. And in the end, I just asked what my dad would do and all that. And he said, just, he's up.

2:08:49You know, I had to borrow the money, basically, to pay for the inheritance tax. Otherwise, it would just be another 20,000 or sort of, or so, you know, just go to the HMR scene. And for what? Or we still sort of out the inheritance tax. Well, I'm really sorry that you've had to go through that. You're not alone. I think there are many other people who've been in similar situations where it hasn't ended well. And there are so many intrinsic on fairness with the inheritance tax system. And you've just shown us what one of them is. Simon, thank you very much. Cara says, Ian, you're not stupid. Well, this is not a university-held opinion, Cara, that you have there. Why should I be paying 40% tax, but rich people paying nothing near that? The rich might pay more tax, but not as a proportion of their income. Well, that's actually factually incorrect, isn't it? Because, I mean, if you are rich and you're paying tax on income, you're either paying 40% or 40%, I mean, I would say paying 40% isn't necessarily rich.

2:09:58If you're paying 45%, so what's that over 125,000? Well, most people would say, that means that you are... Does that qualify as rich? You see, my definition of rich is that you can go out and buy anything without worrying about how you're going to pay for it. And I don't think somebody on 125,000 pounds a year would necessarily think that, particularly if they've got a family, particularly if they've got a mortgage. I think what you're alluding to is what Pfizer-Shahin was talking about, about the asset rich, because, yes, you're right. They're not paying necessarily... They'll be paying tax on their income, but they're not paying tax on their assets. And, I mean, I'm honestly not sure whether... If you want to drive rich people out of this country, fine, introduce all the wealth taxes you like, introduce this 2% tax over assets of 10 million and whatever.

2:10:59But we've already got a drain of millionaires and billionaires leaving this country. Don't believe me on that. Just look at the actual figures. We have, apart from China and Russia, we have more millionaires leaving our country than any other country in the world. Now, do you think that's a record to be proud of? Because I don't. Because the money that they're taking with them, that's money that is not being invested in the British economy anymore. Why would anyone think that was a good idea? Johnson Croydon, hello, John. Good morning. Good evening. I want to put a... You might think of ridiculous scenario to you. Then a possible answer. Let's say we've got loads of multi-multimillionaires. Let's say they have five children and each one in there is a couple of hundred million. Those children, and if you multiply this over a number of families, they could live out their lives with a mountain of cash, never pay any tax, never pay any contributions of the country,

2:12:08except local authority tax, where they live, obviously. And their children, and this could go on and on and on, where we have a number of people who never contribute anything to the country. Now, as on the other hand, if you take regular people and live a normal life, pay their tax and they've got a property, one answer would possibly be a deferred property tax. So that you have no worries about having to sell the property that you're living in. And if they introduce a tax to be deferred and paid when the property is sold, so presumably after 40 or 50 years, that tax liability is only a small percentage of the value of the property. Yeah, but they don't like things like that because they don't like deferred taxation because they want the money and they want it now.

2:13:11Yes, exactly, but you have to have an answer and then the finer detail is down to the civil servants to thrash out. Just to something of the auto. Well, I mean, there are all sorts of different ways that you can do this. And I accept that if Pfizer is right, I thought the amount that income tax raised was around three or four billion, but it may have gone up because of the family farm tax, I suppose. So say it's now five or six billion. That is just about one pence of on income tax. So I'm not suggesting that you should like replace that with one pence on income tax, but it is a compare. Excuse me, comparatively small amount. And as one of our previous callers said, I would look at the amount that we spend rather than the amount that we tax and we clearly are spending far too much at the moment. We're not living within our means.

2:14:12That's a good point because somebody who enter it's a lot of money is presumably going to spend a lot of it pay a lot of VAT, et cetera, et cetera and keep employment going and one thing. Another so indirectly as Maggie Fatter wants it to introduce in direct taxation. So that money does get spent. But why do you automatically assume that a, if you're a billionaire, you would necessarily divide all the money between your children. I know three billionaires and one of them is not leaving any money to any of his children. He says they can make their own way in life. Well, that's one thing. I mean, I must have it. If I had children, I would want to leave my money to them. Well, my point is not whether that's fair or not, but whether or not somebody could live their life out without contributing anything. Yeah, but if you've got 200 million in the bank, I mean, don't tell me that you get pleasure out of seeing the bank statement every month. You would either spend some of it or you would invest it in ventures that might make you more money.

2:15:14Well, yes, that's what actually works, but obviously with interest, you're going to pay tax interest, but there are ways and means of getting around certain amount of tax that you might have to pay. It's just the possibility of people not having to contribute purely by the accident of birth through nothing that they've done. And if you know, the lives of Riley, that way... Well, I definitely don't think you're a responsible parent if you leave money to a feckless son or daughter. You can stipulate in your will in a way that they can only have it on the condition that they do something with it. That wasn't really my point. No, I know. It was just the idea of whether or not somebody can live out one, two, three generations without contributing anything, you know, in certain situations.

2:16:16You can't legislate for every circumstance, but I think there are very few people in this world who would live their lives like that if they came into a substantial amount of money. But thank you. That was John Incroyter, Miles says, inheritance taxes indeed double taxation, but then so is VAT or anything else based on anything other than taxes on income and profits. It is redistributive and redistribution is one of the most important purposes of taxation in my eyes, second only to inflation management. We have enough financial inequality as it is. And if you got rid of IHT, you would need to dramatically increase other taxes to have the desired redistributive impact. Well, I don't believe you would have to dramatically increase other taxes. And I also don't believe that we should have equality in our financial system. That's a communist view of the world that everyone needs to be equal. That in theory everyone should earn the same amount of money no matter what job they do.

2:17:19Well, that's clearly bonkers. And I don't believe that everyone in society wants to be equal. I think most people are aspirational. They want to better themselves. They want to better their family. And I think trickling down money through generations is a very important part of that. And I'm not going to resile from that. Ian Dale on LBC 949 on LBC. We're talking about inheritance tax and whether Kimmy Badenock, if she does indeed announce that she's going to abolish it, if she gets into government, whether she's right to do that, will it win many votes? Well, not according to some of the phone calls that we've had so far. Let's hear from Max in Marrabo. Halemax. Hi, thanks for having me on. Hi. I've been anti anything conservative ever since the Greeks approach. To those that just as sums me up, but I will say one thing. The part that addresses the injustices of inheritance tax. I will vote for that party. No matter what else. I will say that if the government goes into the idea on this, because I think it is just so criminally unjust, the way it's been managed for the last 13 years.

2:18:24So one text that has actually gone up every single year, because the threshold has never been adjusted from that period. It hasn't gone up since 2009, I think. Yeah, and so basically in other words, the amount that you can leave your children is actually reduced every year because it hasn't been inflation adjusted. Correct. So that's the form of fiscal dragon itself, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. I don't mind some inheritance tax, but I think the way. But if you've made a lot of money in your life and you want to leave your kids in a three, four farm in your town break to get them going. Why should we not be allowed to do that? I think it's just so unjust. I'm not saying, you know, I'm not anywhere near there, but I'm not saying that. Being entitled to leave your kids in full, you know, a couple hundred million that you have. But if you want, if you want to leave them a break, they're keepsen comfortable. You know, why not? And I will definitely be voting for the party that addresses that and I think it will be a vote winner.

2:19:25What do you say to this text from Emma, who says inheritance tax is not double taxation. The person who inherits it hasn't paid tax on it previously. Absolute garbage, because that might be the text. So, you know, that's savings have been taxed. Yeah. So the state has had it share of the money once and then it gets it again. Yes, that's a rubbish. That's the kind of thing I can say about that statement. Well, I do agree with you. I have to say as you probably worked out. But so you think for you, this issue is more important than any other. Massive. It's so massive. I've got a nine year daughter. I'm in my mid 60s. And I'm starting to think about the stuff. And if I make a decent substantial amount of money, I will probably try and join as millionaires that leave the country. Just so as the state doesn't get its hands on what I would like to be my daughter. Why would you carry?

2:20:25Even Italy, for example, Italy has a fairly generous inheritance tax system. And actually, you can't catch your kids out of a world in Italy. You have to leave at least one third of your estate. That's true. Yeah, which I find really interesting. I find it quite cool actually because it prevents a lot of disputes about wolves. I think that's appalling. What if your kids have treated you terribly throughout your entire life? They're ungrateful little horrible people. And you still have to leave them your money. That state interference gone mad. I'll give you that for a second. I really, most families, the kids that treat the parents are falling. Oh my goodness. Max, thank you. Sasha says, we need another Ian Dailer Lewis Goodall inheritance tax debate. Does anyone really want that? Great as an e-ling, hello, Grace. Hi. You were talking about what it is to be rich. And I have tattooed in my arm.

2:21:26God's rich is that Christ's expense, but that's also not a material thing. You have that tattooed on your arm. Yes. Goodness me. Well, it's an act of a crime, but it's also the theological meaning of my name, which is that we're offered non-material metaphysical things that we don't earn. That's what Grace means. It's offered us something that we don't earn. We don't work our way to heaven with religious rules. But in terms of the material things, as average Brit, we are pretty wealthy compared to most of humanity. We have inherited a state and infrastructure that a lot of people in our world could only dream of. So I feel that we've all inherited things, to some extent. And in terms of individual families, I have inherited some money from my grandmother because of the value of our house going up. And I think a lot of other people in my generation will inherit a bit of money because of how house prices have changed when parents or grandparents pass away. It would be nice if not to have had to have inherited the tax on that. But I also think that it's the right thing because it would probably just make inequality worse, had there not been inherited the tax on that.

2:22:31I didn't do anything to earn that money that I inherited from her. I'm very grateful for it, particularly given how impossible the job market is. And I kind of feel like it would not be good for the gap between rich and poor in our countries to just grow because of abolishing inherited the tax as much as it would be nice if it weren't there in theory. So it would just make things more unjust. What do you make of the double taxation argument? I completely understand it. I think it makes a lot of sense. But I think it does also make sense that ultimately the recipients of the wealth that passed down haven't done anything to earn it. And there are other injustices in our country that one could point fingers out as well. And I think it's concerning that there's so much money being accrued by people who were able to buy up properties and those properties just go up and up and value off other people having to work really hard to get in money. So there are lots of ways that the wealth distribution in our country could be criticized. But I think the unbalanced cause of the fact that this will probably just make the gap between rich and poor in our country worse.

2:23:34It's probably not going to be very helpful. I'm used to see how they've cost today. And I do understand your argument about it being double taxation. I just think again, the bit of money that I got from my grandmother which passed away, I did nothing to earn that. I'm just privileged to have received that. So I don't really think it's fair that we should have no taxation on that at all. And we still get, you know, to inherit something. So I'm very privileged on that front. Somebody's just texted in Ian, have you got a tattoo on your heart? Tax the poor, give it to the rich. No, the only tattoo that I'm ever likely to have will be a crossed pair of hammers. Simple as that. Grace, thank you very much indeed. Barry says the presenter, I see what he means me, is happy to scrap the triple lock but complains about inheritance tax. 20% on 12.5,000 pounds is absolutely ridiculous. 15,000 should be the tax threshold before paying tax.

2:24:34Well, I don't disagree with that. And of course, that's another form of fiscal drag. Well, the 12.5,000 pound tax threshold has been in existence now for many years. Having said that, in 2010, it was 6,000 pounds. So I mean, it could be a lot worse. The problem is, though, if you wanted to raise it to 15,000, that would cost 40 billion pounds. 40 billion in inheritance tax would cost 6. So, I mean, it's a nice aspiration to have. And I would love people not to pay tax under 15,000. But in the current climate, it's just not possible. Paul's in Pateley, hello, Paul. You know that it's perfectly possible to pass your assets to your children while you're living. It is, but you have to stay alive for seven years before you... Well, I'm talking half years in today. Well, I hope you're going to continue for at least another year and a half. After that, you're not worried, are you?

2:25:34Well, no, but you clearly aren't. Otherwise, you wouldn't have done it this way. No, because if your children leg up early in life, not when you pass away, and... Well, I remember having that discussion with my mother once. There you go. This was going back to the 1990s. And she just burst into tears and would not discuss it. But I said, look, if you don't do something like this, we will have to pay inheritance tax, which will mean that we have to sell the farm. And of course, nowadays, it's even obviously with what Labour have done. It's even worse than that. But she hated talking about anything to do with death, so it never happened. And so we obviously had to pay inheritance tax when both my parents died. Well, I did almost 60th birthday. And I live off my pension now. I don't live as well as I could, obviously. But I see my family living better. Isn't that lovely? Yeah. And I think you've done exactly the right thing. And I'm glad you mentioned that at the end of the hour, because I think it will encourage a lot of people who are of a similar age to you to maybe do the same pool.

2:26:42Thank you very much indeed for your call. Well, thanks for all of your calls and messages this evening. I'll be back tomorrow from 7th. If you missed any of this evening's show, you can listen back on our free Global Player app, or the LBC app, where you can stay up to date with all the latest news, videos and opinion. Download the official LBC app for free from your app store now. There's a new episode of the where politics meets history podcast, which will be up in a couple of hours time. This has been a global production.