UK election podcast 2

Summary

More or Less: UK Election Podcast 2 – April 17, 2015

Main Theme:
In this episode, BBC Radio 4’s More or Less team – Charlotte MacDonald, Ruth Alexander, and Tim Harford – dissect and fact-check critical economic claims and policies at the heart of the 2015 UK general election. The episode unpacks political statements, scrutinizes statistics, and puts real numbers behind campaign rhetoric in six major areas: NHS funding, government spending, railway policy, debt and deficit basics, right to buy, and education spending.

---

1. Funding the NHS ([00:27]–[05:11])

Discussion Points:

• The NHS budget and its squeeze: England’s NHS budget is about £115 billion a year, with spending rising much more slowly than in previous decades.
• Growing and aging population increases pressure, meaning "almost 10% less to spend on each individual as a result" (Ruth Alexander, [01:27]).
• Efficiency savings: Simon Stevens, Chief Executive of NHS England, forecasts a £30 billion funding gap by 2020, with a hopeful £22 billion to come from efficiency savings – a figure many health economists see as optimistic.
• Implications of ring-fencing NHS spending: Although health has been protected, cuts in social care indirectly raise pressure on the NHS.

Notable Quote:

"The Institute for Fiscal Studies reckoned that the actual effect of that aging population is that there’s almost 10% less to spend on each individual as a result."
— Ruth Alexander ([01:27])

• Political positions: Both Labour and the coalition attribute NHS challenges differently, but practical differences in planned funding are marginal.

---

2. Government Spending: The Pizza Metaphor ([05:11]–[10:45])

Discussion Points:

• David Cameron’s "1% a year" spending cut equated to "one out of every hundred pounds," but the impact varies due to commitments to protect certain departments.
• Public spending visualized as a "£746 billion pizza" or £12,000 per person, which is 3% smaller than at the start of the Parliament.
• Real-terms cuts have fallen disproportionately on unprotected departments, already down over 30% in five years.
• Differentiation between protected (e.g., NHS, education, pensions) and unprotected slices ("artichokes") of spending; further cuts create deeper problems in areas like local government and policing.

Notable Quote:

"So under the Conservatives, some of the pizza is untouched, but the slice with, I don’t know, artichokes is much smaller."
— Charlotte MacDonald ([09:25])

• Party approaches:
  • Labour: Plans to cut the current deficit (not the total), leaving room for more borrowing; no need for further real-terms cuts overall.
  • Lib Dems: Middle ground, combining tax rises, spending cuts, and borrowing.
  • SNP/Greens: More spending, less detail; Greens favor reversing cuts and adding new programs.

---

3. The State of the Railways ([11:03]–[14:56])

Discussion Points:

• Conservative pledge: Freeze regulated rail fares, claiming it saves average commuters £400 by the next election.
• Under scrutiny: Freeze means fare rises at the rate of RPI inflation (traditionally higher than CPI), affecting only 45% of tickets, benefitting wealthier commuters.
• Punctuality and overcrowding: Punctuality has dropped in recent years; overcrowding persists especially in London – 20% of commuters can't get a seat at peak times.
• Debate on renationalization: Season ticket prices have broadly tracked inflation since the early '90s; no strong evidence that nationalization would improve fares or punctuality.

Notable Quote:

"So this price freeze is beginning to sound like a price rise."
— Charlotte MacDonald ([12:28])

---

4. Debt and Deficit Explained ([15:06]–[19:37])

Discussion Points:

• Tim Harford’s paddling pool metaphor:
  • Water in the pool = National Debt (£1.5 trillion, ~£25,000 per person)
  • Water from the hose = Deficit (annual borrowing, now £90 billion, £1,450 per person, down from over £150 billion)
• Interest payments on national debt: £45-50 billion annually.
• Only Conservatives and UKIP propose actually shrinking national debt in absolute terms.

Notable Quotes:

"Politicians will sometimes talk about paying down the deficit. That’s just a mistake... You pay off a debt."
— Tim Harford ([15:56])

"For every £15 the government spends, £1 is going in debt interest payments."
— Tim Harford ([16:30])

• Party differences:
  • Labour: Will balance the "current deficit," which means more borrowing is allowed than under Conservatives.
  • Lib Dems: Aim to borrow less than Labour, more than Conservatives.
  • Greens/SNP: Support ending or easing austerity, some details unclear.

---

5. Conservative "Right to Buy" Policy ([19:55]–[23:49])

Discussion Points:

• Proposal: Extend right to buy to 1.3 million housing association tenants, with discounts up to £100,000 (London) or £78,000 (elsewhere).
• Practical barriers: Most housing association tenants are less likely to afford mortgages (majority on housing benefit, many retired or lone parents).
• Funding skepticism: Conservatives plan to finance discounts and new builds through selling high-value council homes. However, combined costs (replacements, brownfield clean-up, repaying local authority borrowing, the discounts themselves) likely outstrip raised funds.
• Track record: Earlier right to buy expansions led to 15,000 extra sales but only 3,000 new homes built.

Notable Quote:

"A lot of experts are sceptical about the whole idea ... Just 15,000 people buying their homes could cost a billion pounds. And the manifesto plan is to extend the guarantee to 1.3 million families."
— Ruth Alexander ([21:52])

---

6. Education Spending ([23:49]–[27:16])

Discussion Points:

• All major parties promise to "protect" education, but definitions vary:
  • Lib Dems: Per pupil funding (age 2–19) protected in real terms, rising with inflation and then with growth.
  • Conservatives: Protect cash per pupil for ages 5–16.
  • Labour: Protect the entire education budget (including teacher training).
• Pupil numbers forecast to rise by 7% over five years; inflation forecasts match, so real value is at risk without explicit adjustments.
• Greens' promise is the largest by far: class size reductions and free (organic) school meals, with a 33% budget increase and significant new costs.

Notable Quote:

"There is another party actually promising to spend much more on education, and that’s the Greens. Not least nutritious and, you know, probably organic, free school meals for all."
— Ruth Alexander ([26:14])

• Is spending always better? Evidence is mixed; recent research in England shows only a modest link between resources and attainment.

---

Memorable Moments & Quotes

• "The mushrooms are safe. And in fact the mushrooms are likely to spread."
  — Tim Harford, on NHS funding (pizza metaphor) ([08:05])
• "The jury’s out" on more spending leading directly to better educational outcomes. ([27:03])
• "Voters are just going to have to decide how hungry they’re feeling, and who they think is going to pay for all this pizza."
  — Tim Harford ([10:45])

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |-------------------------------|-------------| | Funding the NHS | 00:27–05:11 | | Government Spending (Pizza) | 05:11–10:45 | | Railways & Fares | 11:03–14:56 | | Debt and Deficit Metaphors | 15:06–19:37 | | Conservative Right to Buy | 19:55–23:49 | | Education Spending | 23:49–27:16 |

---

Summary

This episode offers a rigorous but accessible dive into the numbers behind election promises, using memorable metaphors (pizza, paddling pool), fact-checking political claims, and highlighting both the limits of what statistics can show and the ambiguities of campaign language. By separating fact from spin, More or Less helps voters better evaluate the economic stakes of the 2015 UK general election.

Transcript

[A]

Hello and welcome to our second election podcast. I'm Charlotte MacDonald.

[B]

And I'm Ruth Alexander.

[A]

And if you've heard our first one, you'll know that more or less, as Tim Harford and Ruth Alexander have been invited onto Radio 4's PM programme with Eddie Maher to do a daily fact check into the statistics that are being bandied around by politicians during the campaign,

[B]

Here are six of the latest topics that have come under our scrutiny.

[A]

Topic 1 Funding the NHS. In a second week of campaigning on Tuesday, 7th of April, Healthcare was making headlines.

[C]

The state of your health is of great concern to politicians who want you to vote for them. But they all know that in order just to stand still, the NHS will need to spend much more money than it gets at the moment, raising questions of where it will all come from. Taxes, cuts in other departments. Last year, a report by the NHS England Chief Executive Simon Stephens said the health service would need an extra 30 billion pounds every year, over and above inflation, just to keep things as they are. Simon Stephens estimated that 22 billion of that 30 billion could come from efficiency savings. The other eight would have to be new money. Ruth Alexander from Radio 4's More or Less has been running her slide rule over the nhs. Let's start with the basics, Ruth. How much money does the NHS get?

[B]

That's a good question. The NHS is divided up by nation in the UK. So in total, the UK spends about 135 billion pounds on the NHS. For a Westminster election, we're arguing about England, and the NHS budget in England is about £150 billion a year. Now, the coalition has had a policy of ring fencing NHS spending. So unlike many other departments, Health has been protected over the last few years and has even seen its budget go up slightly in real terms over the course of the Parliament. And yet the NHS has been facing a real squeeze. So how can that be? Well, the budget hasn't risen as much each year as it used to in the past, for a start. So from 97 to 2009, it rose by about five and a half percent on average every year. In the past four years, it's risen by more like 0.8%. And the problem is we've got a growing population. The population's also grown by about 0.8% every year over the past four years. So you can immediately see a problem with the sums. What's more, we've got an aging population, and that means doctors and nurses are seeing patients with more complex health needs which need more time and money to treat so, just to give you an idea, this was a really striking statistic I came across. The Institute for Fiscal Studies reckoned that the actual effect of that aging population is that there's almost 10% less to spend on each individual as a result. Now, Labour argues that the coalition government is also to blame for the challenges the NHS has been facing. It points to the fact that other areas, like social care budget has been cut, meaning that people who in the past would have been helped by social care staff are now turning up at A and E, perhaps with more acute problems than they would have done. However, it's actually hard to prove that with data, but experts I've spoken to do, do say they think it is happening.

[C]

Areth, I mentioned this 30 billion figure. Just dig deep into that for me. How much does the NHS really need in future?

[B]

Yeah, well, so this number came from a report by the head of NHS England, Simon Stephens, as you mentioned. The report came out in October and basically it said that the NHS is facing an annual 30 billion shortfall by 2020. Now, this £30 billion black hole, that doesn't actually mean the budget has to go up by £30 billion. I mean, he's made an estimate of how much the services we'll need will cost and that it would be £30 billion to keep things as they are, the standard as they are, if we didn't manage to make the NHS more efficient and productive. But if we can deliver NHS services in a more efficient way and get more treatments per pound, then we won't need an extra £30 billion. I mean, it could be £5 billion, £10 billion extra that politicians have to spend. In his report, he suggests that you, you know, it would be £8 billion that they'd have to stump up if we really up the ante with efficiencies. But that would presume really significant efficiencies and productivity gains. And health experts say, you know what, we'll be really lucky. I mean, looking at past performance and other industries, it's unreasonable to expect the NHS to achieve productivity, or 2 or 3%, which was kind of the upper bounds in that report. But, Eddie, a final thought, if I may. In 2009-10, the Department of Health was nearly a quarter of all departmental spending for the Government. This financial year, it'll be about a third. And this shows, I think, how much the NHS has been protected and correspondingly the scale of the cuts on other departments. And this trend is likely to continue. So the difference between the parties as regards the other departments is probably more significant on the nhs, there may not be that much between them in practice.

[A]

Part 2 if public spending was a pizza. On Thursday 9 April, attention turned to government spending, as David Cameron had this to say.

[D]

If we are returned to office, we

[E]

need two more years of saving one out of every hundred pounds that the government spends.

[B]

That's what we've said we'll do.

[C]

And we'll do that instead of putting up people's taxes.

[B]

Because this money has to come from somewhere.

[C]

One out of every 100 pounds is 1%, am I right, Tim? I don't have the calculator.

[D]

It is 1% by definition, and yet

[C]

the other parties are saying the Conservatives are planning huge cuts. Can you, can you help us understand?

[D]

I will try, Eddie. So imagine that public spending is a delicious, gigantic, £746 billion pizza. £12,000 a person. Now, this pizza, public spending pizza, is a little bit smaller than it used to be.

[C]

Okay, I'm just going to get my head around this delicious, gigantic, 746 billion pound pizza. 12,000 is the thing you want us to focus on. £12,000 a person.

[D]

Let's focus on the 746 billion. I'm just trying to give you some context, okay?

[C]

And you're saying the pizza is a bit smaller than it used to be?

[D]

It is. It is 3% smaller than it was at the beginning of this parliament.

[C]

In real terms, that doesn't sound like a much smaller pizza.

[D]

No, it's just a sliver in some ways. But what you have to realize is half the pizza is things such as interest payments on the debt and Social Security payments. And the cuts that we've had so far haven't really touched them. In fact, they've been growing. So while the pizza as a whole is just 3% smaller spending by government departments, which is about half the pizza, they are 10% smaller than they were five years ago and they may well keep shrinking.

[C]

All right, but how does this help us with David Cameron saying that the cuts will be just one pound in every hundred pounds and just for a couple of years.

[D]

So what Mr. Cameron is talking about is 1% a year off the entire pizza. What we have to bear in mind is that a lot of the pizza isn't going to be cut. So imagine this pizza is a quattro stagioni.

[C]

Okay?

[D]

Okay. We've got distinct slices. The NHS is the mushrooms, the defence budget is the ham.

[C]

That kind of thing is the education budget. Olives.

[D]

Yeah, we could, if you want, we could say the education budget's the olives. And then there's a big slice of the pizza that you just have to give to an annoying friend. That's the interest payments on the national debt. We can't control them. Now, all the parties then have this task of either preserving the pizza by raising taxes or by borrowing money or by slicing bits off the pizza without ruining it. And everybody, as far as we can work out, has promised to leave certain slices of the pizza alone.

[C]

Specifically which slices?

[D]

Well, the details vary, but every. Everybody is determined to expand the NHS budget in real terms. And that's a big deal because the budget for healthcare is nearly a fifth of the pizza.

[C]

So the mushrooms are safe.

[D]

The mushrooms are safe. And in fact the mushrooms are likely to spread. Now, the coalition government also protected the school's budget. I think that was the olives. I lose track. They protected foreign aid, pensions, grew more generous, interest payments on the debt beyond government control. So there's a lot of stuff you can't touch. Looking forward, the Liberal Democrats say they're going to protect spending on health, education and science. Labour and the Conservatives both say they're going to protect spending on health and education. Ukip say they'll protect the NHS and the defence budget. So with these slices protected, or even seeing their toppings spread across the pizza, the other slices are going to have to shrink to accommodate. Or alternatively, we keep the public spending pizza whole by raising taxes or by continuing to borrow. And many parties are willing to contemplate that, it seems.

[C]

So talk us through the future of this pizza.

[D]

Well, we spoke to the Redoubtable Institute for Fiscal Studies to get their projections and they told us that David Cameron's 1% a year cuts actually imply departmental spending cuts of 7% over the next Parliament. And then once you ring fence these certain slices, you say you can't touch them. We are looking at a 15% total cut to non protected departments and that's on top of a more than 30% cut to non protected departments in the last five years.

[C]

So under the Conservatives, some of the pizza is untouched, but the slice with, I don't know, artichokes is much smaller.

[D]

Exactly, exactly. The everything else category, let's call it artichokes. That's smaller.

[C]

What do the other parties want to do?

[D]

The Labour Party doesn't need to cut into the pizza at all. So Labour hasn't promised to eliminate the budget deficit, they've promised to eliminate something else called the current deficit. And that leaves the Labour Party free to borrow an extra £35 billion or so a year relative to the Conservatives now in pizza too, that means the pizza stays intact, although clearly there would be more borrowing. The Liberal Democrats seem to be somewhere in the middle. They've got plans both to raise taxes and to cut spending and they're also willing to borrow. So the Institute for Fiscal Studies put them maybe slightly closer to Labour, but they're somewhere in the middle of the Labour and the Conservatives. The SNP want to increase departmental spending and certain benefits, and we haven't been able to get very detailed plans from Ukip or the Greens. But if you saw the leaders debate, the Ukip basically had a list of slices of pizza that they were quite happy to abolish and notably foreign aid. And the Green Party, they seem to be quite keen to order garlic bread on the side and to pay for that by raising taxes or by borrowing more. So the voters are just going to have to decide how hungry they're feeling and who they think is going to pay for all this pizza.

[B]

Since this interview was broadcast, more manifestos have been published.

[A]

Ukip says that it aims to eliminate the deficit by the end of three years into the next Parliament, as set out by the Treasury.

[B]

Currently, the Greens say they want to reverse public spending cuts, while the S and P wants to increase departmental spending and certain benefits.

[A]

Part 3 the State of the railways. On Friday 10th April, train fares were in the news.

[C]

And as he was saying, the railways have been one of the talking points in the campaign today. The Conservatives promising a price freeze which would, they say, save the average rail commuter £400 by the time of the next election. The team from Radioforce more or less have been beavering away on your behalf to help us understand some of the numbers. Ruth Alexander, what is an average rail commuter?

[B]

I asked the Conservative Party and they said what they mean is they've estimated the average annual season ticket price for this year and then projected how much the cost would go up each year under Labour's policy compared to their freeze. So they're adding up savings over several years and making assumptions about what Labour would do when Labour Tell me they haven't said yet. So it's another severe case, I'm afraid, Eddie, of politician maths. But still, let's look at what they mean by freeze. It's a freeze the coalition government has had in place for two years already, actually, and the policy is that regulated fares would rise in line with inflation and no more. Now, if they were using the CPI Consumer Prices Index as their measure of inflation, that would be good news for Rail passengers, it's currently 0%, but they're not. They're using the RPI, the retail prices Index, that measure of inflation, which is currently 1% and in fact always tends to be higher.

[C]

So this price freeze is beginning to sound like a price rise.

[B]

It is, isn't it? Yeah, to the Conservatives it would be a freeze in real terms, but to you it would feel like you just paid more for your train ticket. And there are some further nitty gritty details. The firstly, the government can only control the price of about 45% of all tickets sold. They're called, as I mentioned, regulated fares and that encompasses season tickets and some off peak returns, as well as any time tickets in major cities. So this price freeze, which is a price rise, would only affect a few less than half of tickets sold. Advanced tickets in general, for example, wouldn't be frozen. Another point is that a cap on railfare sounds like a policy directed at all, or, you know, the ordinary voter. But actually the Institute of Economic affairs reckons that 60% of spending on railfares is undertaken by the richest 20% of households. So you could argue it's a policy aimed at the rich.

[C]

Labour says services have worsened for what it calls hard pressed computers.

[B]

Yeah, train punctuality went up a little in the first couple of years of the coalition government, but it has fallen over the last year so. About 85% of trains were on time in the first quarter of this year and that compares to more like 90% in 2010. So it's really in the last couple of years that performance has slipped. Overcrowding hasn't been getting worse overall, but it has in some places and commuters in London and Sheffield will feel it the most. A fifth of commuters in London can't get a seat at peak times.

[C]

The Green Party wants to re nationalise the railways. Were things better? Were fares cheaper?

[B]

Well, broadly speaking, season tickets cost about the same as they did in the early 90s when the railways were privatised. When, when you strip out the effect of inflation, they've gone up in line with the rpi inflation on average. And experts reckon the advanced fares we have now, which they work a bit like low cost airline tickets. So the first people that buy them, if you buy them early, you get them cheapest. Experts reckon they've brought average prices down. But other fares that you don't buy in advance, you just turn up at the station, they've gone up an awful lot. And then there's a question about whether services are more punctual now than under British Rail. And performance stats comparing the last 20 years of nationalisation with the first 20 years of privatisation suggest actually average punctuality levels were about the same. And safety record's really good too.

[A]

On Monday, April 13, the Labour Party launched its manifesto.

[B]

It said they would cut the deficit every year and balance the books as soon as possible in the next Parliament.

[A]

So Tim went on to PM to explain two words that frequently confuse people. Part four, debt and the deficit.

[C]

Guide us through what the parties are planning on debt and the deficit. Tim?

[E]

Well, let me venture another one of my metaphors.

[C]

Eddie, not another pizza.

[E]

No, no, no. This is a paddling pool, okay? So imagine you're filling the paddling pool up with water. Now, the total amount of water in the pool is government debt. What the government owes and the flow of water from the hose pipe into the pool, that's the deficit. So that's the extra government spending that isn't covered by tax receipts. Now, politicians will sometimes talk about paying down the deficit. That's just a mistake. You can reduce the deficit by reducing the flow of water into the pool. You can stop the deficit, but you can't pay off a deficit.

[C]

You pay off a debt.

[E]

Exactly. Well, maybe eventually you would start to siphon water out of the pool, although it doesn't happen much at the moment.

[C]

How big are the numbers we're talking about?

[E]

Well, the debt, government debt is 1,500 doll billion pounds. Quite a big number, 1.5 trillion pounds. That is about 25,000 pounds per person in the country. And it's also about 80% of annual national income at the moment. And it's doubled since the crisis and it's still growing.

[C]

What does interest on the debt cost us?

[E]

It's between £45 billion and £50 billion a year at the moment. That's £750 a person that. Interest payments, annual interest payments. Clearly quite a significant sum, but it's manageable. So for every £15 the government spends, £1 is going in debt, interest payments.

[C]

So that's just to remind everyone that's the debt, the water and the paddling pool we're talking about. What about the hose pipe, the deficit?

[E]

Well, the deficit was over £150 billion a year at its peak, which was the final year of the last Labour government. And that was over 2,400 pounds per person of extra borrowing that year. Now the deficit's fallen, but not by that much. It's still £90 billion, or £1,450 per person.

[C]

What are the different parties promising to do about the deficit?

[E]

Well, I suppose the natural benchmark to

[D]

start with is George Osborne's last budget.

[E]

Now, that proposed a tight squeeze on public spending, followed by a bit more breathing room towards the end of the Parliament. Now, on that plan, the deficit is going to disappear, completely eliminated. The flow of water into the paddling pool is going to stop, meaning that taxes totally pay for government spending.

[C]

What about Labour's plans?

[E]

Well, in launching Labour's manifesto today, Ed Miliband has been promising no extra borrowing. Now, by that he means that every spending commitment has a tax rise attached to it. But actually, like every other party, Labour does plan to borrow quite a bit

[D]

over the next few years.

[E]

Labour's promised to balance the current DEFIC in the next five years. Now, that's not the same as eliminating the deficit. What it actually means in practice is up to 30 to 35 billion pounds a year more borrowing relative to Conservatives. That's 500 pounds a person, so you can spend that on public services, but of course, it adds to the stock of the debt. Now, we don't know whether Labour would actually use that extra wiggle room, but they've given it to themselves.

[C]

That's the big two. What about some of the other parties?

[E]

Well, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Liberal Democrats are living up to their campaign sales pitch of being in the middle, so they'll borrow more than the Conservatives, but less than Labour. Now, the other parties express their goals in different ways, but broadly. Both the Scottish Nationalists and Clyde Cymru seem to have similar plans to Labour for the UK deficit as a whole. Now, the Green Party has promised an end to austerity, but it hasn't given details about what that means for the deficit. Ukip have said they will reduce Britain's debt, so that implies an end to the deficit.

[C]

So only the Conservatives and Ukip are actually planning to reduce the debt.

[E]

Only the Conservatives in UKIP are planning to reduce the debt in absolute terms. But other parties are planning also to reduce it relative to the size of the economy, which is growing. So the Labour, Labour, the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and the SNP are all planning to try to pull off that balancing act. The paddling pool is expanding, so you can put a bit more water in without actually increasing the depth of the

[D]

water, if that makes any sense.

[C]

How does the paddling pool look? Let's not go into all of that. The key thing is there are differences in how the parties are planning to tackle our economic situation.

[E]

Yeah, voters have a choice. There are real differences. We should bear in mind though, that neither the coalition nor the last Labour government were actually able to meet the fiscal aspirations that they set out. So we shouldn't take any of these manifestos too seriously.

[A]

Part 5 the right to buy On Tuesday 14 April, the Conservatives launched their manifesto.

[C]

The Conservatives said they would extend the right to buy scheme for housing association tenants in England. David Cameron said this means up to 1.3 million tenants could buy their homes at a discount. Ruth Alexander from More or Less has been looking at the numbers. What have you found?

[B]

Well, first the potted history. Eddie, if I May. In the 80s, social housing meant one thing, didn't it? Council housing. And then lots of the stock was sold off when Margaret Thatcher came up with the right to buy policy originally. Now, about half of social housing is council owned, council owned. The other half is housing association owned. So a lot of people, about 1.3 million households, Cameron reckons, could be in a very lucky situation. Under this scheme, if they'd been in social housing for three years, they'd be able to buy the home they rent at a large discount. That discounts about £100,000 in London, £100,000 in London and up to £78,000 elsewhere. And that's how it already works for council tenant. But let's think about who lives in housing association properties. The reality is that to get on a housing association list these days, you have to be homeless or on the verge of it or in a vulnerable housing situation. Two thirds of households get housing benefit, we know that much. Only a quarter have anyone in full time work. Almost a third are retired and about 20% to fifth are lone parents. So it's hard to know how many people would actually be able to take advantage of a scheme like this. But it seems, it seems unlikely that it would be as many as it was in the 80s, even with the large discount on offer. The head of one housing association in London told us that to get the required mortgage for many properties, you'd need to be earning at least £50,000.

[C]

What about the funding of the policy? The Conservatives say it's sorted. Labour's not so sure.

[B]

Well, the Conservatives say they'd fund this by getting local authorities to sell off their most expensive properties when they become vacant. These are council properties and this they say would raise above big pot of money, 4.5 billion pounds to solve the housing crisis, pretty much. But it has to pay for a lot, this pot. Firstly, they promised to replace any property sold one for one, with cheaper affordable housing. So that's going to take. That would take a big chunk of money from the part. Then a billion pounds would go on cleaning up brownfield sites that the Conservatives hope would lead to the building of hundreds of thousands of new homes. Also, some councils would have borrowed money against these council houses, which would need repaying. And the Conservative think tank Policy Exchange have suggested that could be about 20% of any money raised. So nearly another £1 billion, and then a final substantial chunk would go on paying for the big discount for Right to Buy. And remember, this might be huge. Just 15,000 people buying their homes could cost a billion pounds. And the manifesto plan is to extend the guarantee to 1.3 million families.

[C]

So is that all adding up?

[B]

Well, a lot of experts are sceptical about the whole idea and we can look at David Cameron's record on one of the key aspects of this policy. Last time, Right to Buy was given a boost three years ago that basically made the discount people could get bigger. The coalition government said that one new home would be built for every additional property sold under the scheme as a result of the bigger discounts. About 15,000 extra houses were sold when the discount got bigger, but only 3,000 houses got built with the money. But to be fair to the Conservatives, the big problem underlying all this is that we're not building enough houses and we haven't done for decades. A situation the Labour Party has presided over to and so has to share some responsibility for.

[A]

Part six education, education, education. On Wednesday 15 April, the Lib Dems

[C]

have launched their manifesto, as you know, promising to spend more on education than anyone else. Ruth Alexander, will they spend more on education than anyone else?

[B]

Well, at first glance, Eddie, it's hard to tell because the Lib Dems, the Conservatives and Labour have all seemingly made the same promise about education in England to protect it from any cuts. But if you listen carefully, they all mean something different by that. Nick Clegg said today that the Lib Dems would protect spending per pup in real terms from nursery age to 19 year olds. The per head spending would rise in line with inflation until 2017, 18, and then in line with economic growth beyond that. Meanwhile, the Conservatives say they'd protect cash spending per pupil for 5 to 16 year olds. And Labour say they'd protect the entire education budget, that is right through the age range, plus teacher training and some other elements. Ukip's manifesto, of course, also out today, they've made some promises on education, like they'd give secondaries the freedom to become grammar schools. But they've not said much about spending commitments.

[C]

So given that they're all promising slightly different things, is it possible to say whose is the most generous offer?

[B]

Well, you have to consider a few different things that are going to be going on. Pupil numbers are expected to go up 7% over the next five years because of birth rate and immigration. Labour's plan doesn't take that into account. But the Conservative promise to protect cash funding per pupil does. It implies a 7% cash increase. But inflation is also forecast to go up 7%, something that would erode the value of that cash spending per pupil. Now, the Institute for Fiscal Studies says the best way to look at this, then, is that the Conservatives are effectively promising to protect the school's budget in real terms, which is what Labour's promising to do to the education budget, which is larger. Now, the Liberal Democrat plan is to protect per pupil spending for 2 to 19 year olds, so they'd raise it in line with inflation for the first three years and then in line with economic growth thereafter. All of which means that their promise to protect education is the most generous of all.

[C]

So that's the answer. The Liberal Democrats are the party promising to spend the most on education. Well, just when we thought we got somewhere.

[B]

Exactly. There is another party actually promising to spend much more on education, and that's the Greens. They're promising all sorts. Not least nutritious and, you know, probably organic, free school meals for all. And adding up all their promises would total an extra 17 or 18 billion pounds, a whopping 33% increase on current education spending. But perhaps their most costly promise is class sizes of 20. They say this would cost £1.5 billion over the course of the next Parliament. But thinking about how many more teachers you'd need, we reckon it would cost at least that much a year. So for five years, and then you'd have the cost of extra classrooms and extra schools on top of that.

[C]

But in any event, does it follow that the more money you spend, the better the education is at the end of it?

[B]

Well, in general, the research linking spending and educational attainment is actually inconclusive. There has been some recent evidence for England that found a modest positive link between resources and attainment. But really, the jury's out.

[C]

Ruth, thank you very much.

[A]

Thank you for listening to the second More or Less Election podcast.

[B]

If you have any campaign figures you want us to check out, do contact us on Twitter @bbcmoreorless or send us an email at more or lessbc co uk.