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UK election podcast 1
00:33:00
Can you trust the figures given to you by the political parties during the UK's We and...
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- [00:00]
A
Hello and welcome to the first of more or less election themed podcasts. I'm Charlotte MacDonald and I've invited Ruth Alexander in here today to introduce some extra pieces of work that she's been doing, along with Tim Harford.
- [00:14]
B
Yeah, Tim and I, we've been going regularly onto the PM programme on Radio 4, chatting to Eddie Maher about the election campaign. And we've basically been looking at various claims made by the parties, putting them under the spotlight and seeing what light we can shed.
- [00:31]
A
And how's that been going?
- [00:32]
B
It's been going well, I think. You know, the politicians, they create a lot of heat, don't they? They throw a lot of statistics around, they make lots of bold claims and it's just hard to make head or tail of it, really, I think, when you're just listening. So we take the time to look at these claims, look at these numbers and think, what do they really mean?
- [00:53]
A
Thanks very much. So we've brought together a collection of some of the different things you've been talking about. We've got seven in total. We're going to go through them. One, one. So let's start with claim one. Conservatives say living standards are higher.
- [01:09]
B
Yet the Conservatives have made the improving economy a central part of their election campaign. Here's George Osborne explaining how things have improved.
- [01:18]
C
Our economy is growing more strongly than people expected. Consumer confidence is at a 12 year high. Living standards are higher than when we came to office and rising.
- [01:28]
A
Here's Eddie Maher asking Ruth about that.
- [01:31]
D
Ruth, let's go through what George Osborne had to say line by line. He said the UK economy is growing more strongly than people expected. Is that true?
- [01:39]
B
Well, the numbers have been revised upwards for last year and the Office of Budget Responsibility says the economy picked up more strongly than forecast in the last couple of years as a whole. However, it has also said that before that the economy grew unexpectedly slowly until early 2013. But all things considered, I think we can give the Chancellor this one.
- [01:58]
D
So the UK economy is growing more strongly than people expected. Is consumer confidence at a 12 year high?
- [02:05]
B
Well, the Chancellor's referring to the GFK Consumer Confidence Index, which is derived from a survey of about 2,000 consumers who are asked about their personal finance situation, their savings, how they feel about making major purchases and the overall economic situation. And the index has risen to plus four and this is the highest since June 2002. So it is up, up. But consumer confidence fell after the last election when the coalition government came in. It was minus 20 when they started pretty gloomy and then it became minus 30 after they'd been in office for 18 months. But since early 2013, it has been climbing strongly, although they have got a way to go if they hope to get to New Labour's high point of about plus 10. But what these numbers really tell you is that consumers have been pessimistic about the economy and their personal situation for the past 12 or 13 years, and they've now started to feel a little bit optimistic.
- [03:01]
D
And this critical question at the heart of the electoral debate today, are living standards, as the Chancellor claims, are living standards higher than when the coalition came to office and rising strongly?
- [03:12]
B
Well, he's talking about this because figures have been released from the Office for National Statistics showing that disposable incomes per head are about 0.2% higher than when the coalition government came to power in May 2010. And, you know, as we've heard, George Osborne's really pleased about this, but actually, it's a. That's not much to shout about. For a start, being pretty much back to where we were in 2010 is hardly a giant leap forward. In fact, we've been living through the slowest recovery in modern economic history. And rising strongly. Well, disposable incomes were at 1.9% at the end of 2014 compared to where they were a year earlier. But it may be too early to say this is a strong upward trend. Talking to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, they say these numbers do tend to be quite volatile and really, you'd expect all these three measurements we're talking about to be moving in the same direction, because in a way, they are all measuring the same thing.
- [04:06]
D
And Labour has a different way of looking at things.
- [04:08]
B
Yes, they do. And one of our favourite things to do during elections, more or less, is to fact check campaign leaflets. And an interesting one dropped through the door of More or Less Towers just the other day. In it, the Labour candidate for Ealing Central and Acton, Rupa Hook, sister of Connie, if you like, a celeb spot. She's claiming that under David Cameron, we're all £1,600 a year worse off. But we checked with the Labour Party HQ and they say that's a mistake. Actually, we're not all worse off. They're saying it's just working people. And that's because their figure is based on comparing the wages reported in the annual survey of Hours and earnings with the Consumer Price Index, the measure of inflation. But there are problems with using that as a measure because it doesn't include pensions or take account of tax or benefits. And this number also relies on earnings data from a year ago. And we know that things have been getting better since then, but really, Eddie, one number is never going to be that helpful anyway, whether you choose Labour's preferred number or the one the Conservatives prefer. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has pointed out that different groups are faring differently. Older people have been doing better than the under 30s, people on higher incomes worse than those on lower incomes, and those with children better than those without.
- [05:23]
A
Ok, so perhaps rather unsurprisingly, the Conservatives have been bigging up their economic success. Labour, on the other hand, have been attacking it.
- [05:31]
B
Funny that, isn't it?
- [05:32]
A
Yeah. So, Claim two, Labour says we're worse off under the coalition.
- [05:43]
D
Hello, Tim. The Shadow Chancellor, Ed Ball, says families are now £1,100 a year worse off since 2010 because of all the coalition tax and benefit changes. Is he right? Is that true?
- [05:57]
E
That is mostly true. That is a number that he has fished out of a report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which, as we all know, they're very hard working and respected and independent people. However, he hasn't given the context. So if I can quote from the IFS itself, what's a good IFS voice? I feel like I should put a
- [06:19]
D
bowler hat on, see what you come up with.
- [06:21]
E
The IFS said this average figure disguises considerable variation across households at different income levels and between different household types. Is that a good IFS voice?
- [06:30]
D
Not bad.
- [06:30]
E
Well, there we go. I think they're on holiday on Easter Monday. Anyway, the point is, 1100 might be the average, but it really depends on who you are, how much money you're making, what benefits you might have been eligible for, what benefits have been withdrawn in particular, for instance, child benefit, completely withdrawn for people making more than £50,000. So we think, although that's the average, we think most people are probably not quite as badly off as that £1,100
- [07:00]
D
loss, but it is an average and it's an independent figure.
- [07:02]
E
Yes, it is. We should remember something, though, which is we had a really big budget deficit back in 2010 and unfortunately we still have a fairly big budget deficit. So sooner or later taxes were going to go up, benefits were going to be cut. Labor, Alastair Darling's plans were to raise taxes and cut some benefits, I think. So £1,100 worse off relative to where we were in 2010, but not necessarily £1,100 worse off relative to where we would be under the Labour Party. I know in the sort of world of election Campaigning. All cuts are efficiency savings, they're totally painless. All tax rises are mysteriously levied on other people, on mysterious super billionaires. Actually, we should introduce a tax rise on dormant volcano lairs, Bond villains and things like that. That would raise money if you have
- [07:52]
D
a voice for them.
- [07:53]
E
Yes, I'll work on that one. I'll work on that one for next time. But, yeah, the truth is, taxes were going to go up anyway, so it's probably more interesting to say, well, what's the balance of tax rises and benefit cuts and who's paying what and what are the alternatives?
- [08:09]
D
Ed Bowles has pointed to that rise in VAT from 17.5% to 20% back in 2011. He says that rise alone has cost a couple with children. He doesn't specify which one. 1800 pounds over the last four years.
- [08:23]
E
Yes, it's a wonderful bit of politician maths.
- [08:26]
D
Oh, there's your phrase again.
- [08:27]
E
Because what he's done is he has taken several years of tax payments and he's rolled them all into one big number. And we said that that sort of trick was dodgy when the Conservatives did it last week, and it's still dodgy, but the underlying analysis comes from a Treasury estimate from 2010 and it looks fairly reasonable. What's not reasonable, though, is just to look at VAT alone. You can't look at a single policy in isolation. And Ed Balls isn't the only person do that. So David Cameron today has been saying that 94% of working households are better off thanks to recent tax changes. Nick Clegg has said that 27 million people are £825 better off in terms of the income tax rate.
- [09:08]
D
You're breaking my calculator.
- [09:09]
E
Yeah, well, in each case. So Ed Balls, David Cameron, Nick Clegg, in each case, they're looking at a particular tax. So Ed Balls is looking at vat. David Cameron is looking only at recent tax changes, the stuff they announced in their budget or the stuff that just came in the beginning of the tax year. Nick Clegg is pointing specifically at the tax free allowance for income tax, as we heard a few minutes ago, that's gone up from under £6,500 to £10,600 as of today. The Liberal Democrats pushed that idea, they championed it. The Conservatives have also now seem very keen on it. They say they're going to take it further, the Liberal Democrats say they'll take it further, faster. So you've got these two, these two offsetting things, this broad tax rise and a broad tax Cut.
- [09:55]
D
Who gains and loses from that combination?
- [09:58]
E
That's a really good question and there's no straightforward answer. So VAT's a fairly flat tax. The rich pay more because they spend more, but as a percentage of their income, they pay roughly as much as anyone. Lots of spending is VAT free. Rent is food is domestic, heating enjoys a lower rate of vat. But if those breaks in VAT disproportionately benefit poorer people, it's not by very much. Neither are the income tax allowance changes straightforward in their impact. So we've done some back of the envelope stuff. So imagine you are a low earner, you're making just £5,000 a year, you're paying more VAT because VAT has gone up and you have no benefit at all from the income tax allowance because you weren't paying income tax anyway. So you're probably paying about 1% more tax. If you're much more comfortably off, you're making £50,000 a year where you've gained £200 from cuts to your income tax bill, but you're paying £600 more in VAT. So you're about 1% worse off as well. So £5,000 a year or £50,000 a year, you're still 1% worse off. On the other hand, let's say you're in the middle, you're earning £15,000 a year, so that's a full time salary on a bit more than the minimum wage there. You're gaining £120 from the income tax change, you're paying £175 more from VAT. So you're still worse off, but not much, only by about a third of a percent. So there's no clear trend that person making £15,000 is actually not suffered as much as the really low earner or the earner of £50,000.
- [11:30]
B
So that's the past five years scrutinised. But what about the future?
- [11:35]
A
That's a really good point, Ruth. So the Conservatives have been attacking Labour about how the future might look under them. So claim three, Conservatives say Labour will make you worse off.
- [11:51]
D
Conservatives in Labour is planning an average tax rise of 3,000 pounds for every working household in Britain. Is that where we are?
- [11:58]
E
So Labour have signed up to this fiscal target. They've also said it's a gimmick and the fiscal target changes on Sunday anyway because the tax year changes on Sunday. So it's not quite clear that this fiscal target really is something I'm going to take very seriously. But anyway, if they hit this fiscal target, that means £30 billion, either of spending cuts or of tax rises or a combination. And the Conservatives have said, well, we assume Labour will do that half via tax cuts, that's 15 via tax rises. That's £15 billion of tax rises. And then they've said there are 17 million working households in the UK, and so divide 15 billion by 17 million. You may immediately observe that that doesn't get you to £3,000. That's actually less than £1,000. So then they have to use a bit of serious politician maths and they have to add up this supposed tax rise year after year after year until they get to £3,000. So should we take that seriously? Well, Eddie, if you were to, say, advertise for a personal assistant and say you were going to pay them £100,000 and you've got lots and lots of people applying for the job, and then you said, oh, by the way, that's £25,000 every year for four years, I think most people would say that's not really the way English works, but that is the way that the Conservatives have got this number up to £3,000.
- [13:23]
D
What about the assumptions that are being made?
- [13:26]
E
Well, one thing you might say is, how do we know that Labour will hit this target? Half fire spending cuts and half fire tax rises. They have in the past said that that's their aim, but it's the distant past. We're talking around the time of the last election, so it's years ago. And more recently they've said that that's not something they're going to do. They're not going to achieve this fiscal consolidation half via tax rises. So you might want to ask them, Eddie, next time you speak to a Labour spokesman, I'll just put it on
- [13:53]
D
my to do list. What else do we need to know about the calculation?
- [13:56]
E
Well, to make it look as big as possible, you need to divide this total number by the smallest possible number. So rather than dividing by, say, 62 million, which is the people in the country, or even by the number of households in the country, instead the Conservatives have divided by the number of working households in the country. So that's just over 17 million. So that rules out, for example, any idea that pensioners will pay any of this via vat, via council tax, via income tax, it's all going to fall on working households, apparently. Now, that does all make the numbers look bigger and scarier. And I have to say, Labour have used a similar trick themselves. It's quite handy.
- [14:34]
D
A lot of politics Going into arriving at one sum of money.
- [14:38]
B
Yes.
- [14:38]
E
And one more piece of politics is this sort of implicit assumption that the tax burden is going to be borne equally by all working households. Where I think Labour might well say, well, they were planning to levy more taxes on the rich and lower taxes on poorer households. So, you know, it's, you can make up your own mind, Eddie, and listeners can make up their minds how seriously they want to take this 3,000 pound fee. I think the mathematics behind this is highly questionable. I think it's important to realize there are big differences between the party's plans. So Paul Johnson, very respected figure from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, he says that Labour is probably going to be borrowing 25 billion to 30 billion pounds a year more by the end of the Parliament, I should say. Chukuramuna, Labour's business secretary, says he doesn't recognise that figure, but that's what Paul
- [15:29]
D
Johnson estimates and that's based on what that estimate?
- [15:32]
E
Well, the Conservatives have said they want to stop borrowing money so they want to eliminate the deficit. Labour have said they want to eliminate the current deficit, which sounds the same, but it isn't. What that means is they're happy to borrow money, but only if that money funds capital investment. So that is things like building schools, building hospitals, building prisons. And capital investment is about £30 billion a year. So Paul Johnson I think quite recently has said, well, Labour have left themselves £30 billion worth of, of wiggle room. They're not necessarily going to borrow that much, but they've left themselves the scope to do that.
- [16:07]
A
Okay, but it's not just the major parties that have come under scrutiny from the more or less fact checking. What else have you done, Ruth?
- [16:15]
B
Yeah, well, we have looked at the smaller parties as well. You know the TV debate, the seven party leader debate on itv when we were watching that, Nigel Farage came up with a statistic that I think caught the attention of a lot of people. And so we decided to have a closer look at that.
- [16:40]
A
So claim four Nigel Farage and the problem of health tourists.
- [16:46]
F
Okay, here's a fact, and I'm sure there are other people who will be mortified that I dare to talk about it. There are 7,000 diagnoses in this country every year for people who are HIV positive, which is not a good place for any of them to be. I know, but 60% of them are not British nationals. You can come into Britain from anywhere in the world and get diagnosed with HIV and get the retroviral drugs that cost up to £25,000 per year, per patient. I know there are some horrible things happening in many parts of the world, but what we need to do is to put the National Health Service there for British people and families, who in many cases have paid into this system for decades.
- [17:26]
D
Is Nigel Farage right that there are 7,000 HIV diagnoses every year? Ruth?
- [17:33]
B
I don't think so, no. According to the government, there were 6,000 new HIV diagnoses in the latest year we have data for, and that's 2013. So why is Nigel Farrow saying 7,000? Well, I mean, I've seen that quoted in the Daily mail, but about six years ago there were 7,000 new cases a year, so perhaps he's just out of date, but the numbers have been falling steadily and it's 6,000, not 7,000.
- [18:00]
D
Then there's his assertion that 60% of the newly diagnosed cases are not British nationals.
- [18:07]
B
And that's not true, because, first of all, that's not how it's counted. They don't count British nationals, they do it by country of birth. Of the 6,000 newly diagnosed people, about 1,000 of them, there are about 1,000 whom we don't have information about where they were born. Of the people we do know, about 54% were foreign born, 46% UK born.
- [18:31]
D
Well, maybe that's not too far away from the assertion. Does that mean 54% were healthcare tourists, which is his essential point?
- [18:39]
B
Yes, that's what he's getting at. No, they're not. I mean, for a start, there are a lot of foreign born people in this country who have the right to use the nhs, of course. I mean, not least including several of our party leaders, spouses, and a lot of foreign born people who are getting HIV treatment here in the UK are from countries where they could get that treatment perfectly well if they stayed at home there. I'm thinking of people from the US or Australia or certain European countries. And indeed, in a lot of countries we have reciprocal arrangements, so the NHS can claim the cost of treatment back for a good number of the foreign born HIV patients that they see. So, Eddie, just as a kind of guide calculation, if we exclude the people From Europe, the US and Australasia, you're left with about 30% or about a third of new diagnoses being people from countries which are poor, which might conceivably produce healthcare tourists. But some of those people will have UK citizenship. We frankly just don't know how many, because we only have the data for where people were born. It does remain a fact that a Significant proportion of the new HIV diagnoses in the UK are people born in Africa. They make up about a quarter of new cases. But this actually is a huge drop from where it was about 10 years ago. It was 54% then.
- [20:06]
A
Ruth, what else have you been looking at?
- [20:08]
B
All sorts. Childcare. Let's talk about that, because the Labour Party and the Conservatives have been arguing bitterly about that, with Labour accusing the Conservatives of allowing hundreds of SureStart centres to close.
- [20:24]
A
And that brings us to number five, the row over SureStart centres.
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D
To refresh your memory, Labour says a thousand would be under threat under a Conservative government. After hundreds of closures already, the Conservatives say the forecast is utter nonsense. And anyway, its record has seen few outright closures, merely the merging of management. So what have you found, Tim?
- [20:47]
C
Well, Eddie, I do find it curious. Politicians are very, very keen to fire off these numbers and they don't seem to be very interested in exploring what the numbers actually mean. So surely the question here is, what is the support that is available for families with young children, particularly deprived young children? And I've discovered you can't really answer that just by counting sure Start centres or by counting childcare places.
- [21:09]
D
But we can talk about what sure Start centres are and what they do.
- [21:13]
C
Yes, they were announced back in 1998 by Tony Blair's government and the idea is that they will provide advice and support for families, particularly in deprived areas. So there'll be play areas, there'll be health advice, support for disabled children, early learning centres and some of the Shore Start centres also offer well respected childcare places, but they've actually always been the minority. So in 2010, for instance, about 800 shore start centres offer childcare places out of maybe 3,500, more than 3,500 around the country.
- [21:47]
D
What about the Labour assertion that the coalition government has closed hundreds of these centres?
- [21:53]
C
Well, indirectly, that appears to be true. So local governments control these centres and so they decide whether they'll be closed. And the coalition government removed the ring fence on funding for Shore Start and it also cut local government funding per person by a quarter in real terms, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. So there's less money. Has that had an impact on Shore Start provision? We spoke to Dr. Kitty Stewart, who's an expert on early years provision from the London School of Economics, and she looked at this in some detail and estimated that more than 600 shore start centres had been closed by June last year. And that's not dissimilar to the Labour Party's claim so the Conservatives say no, that's wrong. It's just a few dozen centres have closed and, and that disagreement turns on the definition of a closure. So if you have two centres in two different towns, you merge them, you close one building and now you've got one centre in one town that's also providing facilities to the other town. The Conservatives say well that's not a closure. I think Kitty Stewart says it is and so does the Labour Party. What really counts there is what's the quality of the service and that's really
- [23:04]
D
hard to measure and do have a sense of the, the quality. How do you measure that?
- [23:08]
C
Well, it's really hard to say. There was a recent survey by the charity for children 500 sure Start centres and they found that a third of these sure Start centres said they were going to provide fewer services. More than a quarter said they'd provide more services and the rest said services would continue as usual.
- [23:26]
E
So you can make of that what you will.
- [23:28]
C
We should also look at childcare provision more generally because that's not just provided through shore start by any means. Eric Pickles of the Conservatives has said that free childcare places have been increased by coalition policies. Now that's true. So there's no more money but they managed to spread the money that exists more thinly and that means the take
- [23:48]
E
up of places for 3 to 4
- [23:50]
C
year olds has increased a little and the coalition has also introduced free places for two year olds.
- [23:55]
B
There have also been much arguing over some of the very richest people in society and their tax affairs and what the politicians are doing to make sure that everybody pays fair tax, pays their way, I suppose. Labour has announced it would scrap non dom tax status. At the moment people who are born abroad or had a parent who was born abroad and can show that they have strong links to this other country, they can claim something called non dom tax status. Basically they are non domiciled and this means that they don't have to pay tax on their overseas earnings. And, and this policy, while sort of on the face of it might sound quite sensible, it's basically seen as a way wealthy foreigners can avoid contributing to the British tax system. They have their money in offshore trusts that can't be got at by the taxman and it just seems to some people that that's really unfair.
- [24:59]
A
So number six, Labour would scrap nom dom status.
- [25:04]
D
What do we know about the number of non doms in the uk, Ruth?
- [25:07]
B
Well even that isn't absolutely in stone. It's estimated that this year 116,000 people will claim non dom status. There are many more people though who could claim it, but most don't earn enough to make it worthwhile or only claim it in a particular year when they've got a big tax bill because they've sold a big asset. But this year's 116,000 registered non doms, that's about double the number There was about 12 years ago. A Treasury report then looking into the issue, said there were 65,000. So a doubling.
- [25:34]
D
So why the rise?
- [25:35]
B
Well, there's been a trend in the last few years for the global rich, as we know, to move to London and weather the international economic storms from the uk. And also there's been a lot of publicity in recent years, so more people are just now aware that this is something they could do. There was a bit of a drop off when the levy, the up to 90,000 pound levy, was brought in a few years ago though.
- [25:56]
D
So, getting to the crux of the political argument, do we know how much money the UK is losing at the moment as a result of people who've got non dom status who are using it?
- [26:06]
B
It's really difficult to know. No one knows. Labour believes the net impact would be to raise an extra £700 million a year for the Exchequer, but that works out as only a few thousand pounds each, so it's not a big number and they can't even say that for sure. I mean, if you think about it, being a non dom is not just about ticking the right box on your tax return. You're going to have a really clever accountant arranging your finances, so you know you're just paying not very much tax. So if non doms were abolished, many of these people would be getting their accountants to think of new cunning ideas to shield their money from the taxman. I mean, people worry they'd leave the country, but they wouldn't have to. They could just make sure that they're in the UK for less than 90 days a year or their spouse could be the one to go and live abroad in Monaco with a sizable share portfolio. It's also worth thinking about how much non doms contribute to the Exchequer because they do still pay tax on their UK income. In the tax year 2012-13, non doms counted for 0.4% of income taxpayers. They paid about 6 billion pounds, but they paid 4% of all income tax. So that sounds like they're more than pulling their weight. However, when you consider that the top 1% of all income taxpayers in the UK pay a whopping 27% of all income tax take. Then you see that the non dom tax take isn't actually that impressive and the levy they pay, only 5,000 of them pay that. At the moment it only adds up to a couple of hundred million pounds a year. That's not much in the grand scheme of things.
- [27:41]
D
What about the counter argument? How much investment could the country lose under Labour's plans?
- [27:46]
B
Well, I'm sorry to be annoying, but that's kind of unknowable as well. It's interesting though, but just because someone's a rich non dom doesn't mean they're investing in the country. Unless you count having a really big house in London as being an investment. I suppose it is in one sense, but one the country can probably do without. Non doms who have successful profit making businesses in the UK will probably want to keep them going. But then again, if you run the head office of your business from London because that's where you live, then maybe that would go. But it isn't just our non doms that attract the global rich to our country. Our rules on non doms, there's a large amount of overseas money coming in from the Middle East, China and Russia being invested in the UK because of volatility elsewhere. So even without our nom dom rules, the UK would likely remain attractive for some of these very wealthy people.
- [28:37]
A
Number seven, the problem of zero hours contracts.
- [28:41]
B
Yes, Labour's Ed Miliband has warned of an epidemic of zero hours contracts, but how much do we know about them really? Tim Harford looked at the detail.
- [28:52]
D
Tim, has there been an epidemic of zero hours contracts?
- [28:56]
E
Eddie, you will have heard this figure of 700,000 people who say they're on these zero hours contracts. It was repeated many times during the reporting we just heard that's up nearly 20% year on year. So you might well say, well that sounds like an epidemic. But the Office of National Statistics who report that figure, they have another figure as well. That figure comes from employees. If you go to employers and you ask employers how many zero hours contracts they have, they say 1.8 million, which is much, much more. So that shows there's not really an agreement over the definition of zero hours contract. And one of the things that the Office for National Statistics warns is it may just be this is a change in the language. People are talking about zero hours contracts in the same way that they've come to talk about selfies or twerking. I should say the Office for National Statistics didn't actually mention twerking, but people Talk about it, they're aware of it. And maybe that's why the figures appear to be going.
- [29:58]
D
What is. I mean, we can talk about terminology, but is there a definition for what constitutes a zero hours contract?
- [30:04]
E
No, there's no official definition. If you say you're on one, then the ONS counts you as being on one. Typically it's regarded as being a contract where you're promised a rate of pay but you're not promised any particular minimum fixed number of hours. So that could be very abusive. It could be you have no idea when you're next going to get a shift, you have no idea how many hours work you're going to get. Or it could be something that people are very comfortable with, people are very happy with. So, for what it's worth, there was a survey done a couple of years ago by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and they found that about a quarter of people on these contracts weren't happy with the fact that they didn't have a guaranteed number of hours. And about more than a third of people on these contracts wanted to work more hours. So that's a minority of people who are unhappy, but it's a substantial minority. So you can see why the politicians want to debate this. But Eddie, actually, I think there are other things about the way the Labour market works in this country that are worth debating and they're not getting nearly as much airtime. These zero hours contracts, they're part of a bigger picture.
- [31:03]
D
All right, well, you've got some airtime now. What should voters be aware of, do you think?
- [31:07]
E
Well, thank you very much. Well, there's good news and bad news about the British Labour market. The good news is the UK economy is generating plenty of jobs and naturally both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats very keen to talk about this and they take pride in this and I think they've got a point. They do use this rather odd metric of jobs per day created. So almost 1200 jobs a day have been created, on balance, during this Parliament. When Tony Blair was Prime Minister, that number was fewer than 900 jobs a day. When Gordon Brown was Prime Minister, it was 500 jobs a day being destroyed net per day. To take a more sensible point of comparison, the OECD produces a standardised measure of unemployment across countries. Their most recent figures say that the UK unemployment rate is 5.9% and falling. That's a bit better than the United States. It's a lot better than the average in the Eurozone.
- [32:04]
D
But I suppose Labour might argue that a lot of these jobs aren't good jobs?
- [32:09]
E
Well, they would say that. And I don't know of any statistical measure that could tell you whether they're good jobs or bad ones. But there is a very clear indicator of a problem in the UK Labour market, and that's productivity. And productivity simply measures how much economic value is being produced for every hour that someone works in the economy. And economists focus a lot on productivity because productivity growth is really the long term foundation of growing living standards.
- [32:37]
A
Thank you very much for listening to the first of our More or Less Election podcasts.
- [32:42]
B
The first There will be more to
- [32:43]
A
come next Friday, hopefully. If you have a claim you want us to examine, email more or lessbc.co.uk.
- [32:50]
B
you can also follow us on Twitter. We're BBC Moreorless. And I hope you now feel a bit clearer about some of these big issues during this election campaign.