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A
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the Ukrobecha. Los ahoros de Memorial Day in Los
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y compra los vasicos pare logar pormenos
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A
ahoro centadolares en la parria gas de
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cuatro que madores char Royal performance series.
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A
And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual, even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show. Hey, everyone, check out this guy and his bird.
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B
What is this, your first date?
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A
Oh, no, we help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.
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B
Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.
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A
Anyways, get a quote@libertymutual.com or with your local agent.
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B
Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.
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A
Chris, it's time for a team meeting.
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C
Oh, right, okay, right, okay. Standing up straight.
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A
We're launching a new miniseries called Imaginatively by Election Cast.
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C
All right, well, it's a good idea. Good idea.
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A
That's Faisal laughing because he's managed to work out what it might be about. Yes, with so much focus on a by election. Well, in fact, two by elections happening. We're gonna do weekly episodes and maybe even more of by election ca. Oh, yeah, there's three of them.
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D
Yeah.
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A
Of by election. Well, I mean, I haven't started By Election Cast yet, so this is a good kind of preparation, isn't it? But, Chris, we need to make some classic trademark newscast opening titles with the clips and the music. So in when I count to three, if you could just say in your classic Chris Mason voice, Makerfield. Blimey.
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C
Yeah, okay.
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A
This is how the sausage is made. We will get recording. I mean, I hope we're recording anyway, because this is the podcast, so. 1, 2, 3.
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C
Makerfield. Blimey.
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A
Oh, bravo. And you will hear Chris saying that multiple, multiple times in the new opening titles of our new miniseries By Election Cast, which will be landing in your feeds on Friday. But now it's time for a plain old vanilla newscast. Newscast, newscast. From the BBC.
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C
Humanity's next great voyage begins.
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D
We are in the midst of a rupture.
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B
Nostalgia will not bring back the old order.
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C
Seven.
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A
Yeah, it's supposed to be me as a doctor. Daddy has. Has also a special connotation.
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B
Ooh la la.
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D
Thinking about it like a panter helped.
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B
Do we play music now or what do we do?
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A
Hello, it's Adam in the newscast studio.
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C
And it's Chris at Westminster wondering about Aberdeen south and broughty Ferry.
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A
But looking forward to discussing them with me over the coming weeks. And Faisal's here in the studio. Hello, Faisal. Hello. Right, we've got quite a few stories to talk about today. First one is about sanctions on Russian oil, which some products are not sanctioned at all. Bit of a head scratch on this one, Faisal. Just talk us through the chronology of how this sort of emerged into. Into the world in the first place. This story.
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C
Yeah.
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D
A sort of slightly obscure legal note was published yesterday, a trade license, no less, which allowed what would otherwise be prohibited under the sanctions regime affecting Russia.
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A
That's our so called sanctions waiver. Well, no, this is why it's more complicated.
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D
Well, I mean, I think anyone would understand that as being a waiver.
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C
Yeah.
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D
And indeed the US version of this same policy is a waiver, but the Foreign Office say it's not a waiver.
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A
And basically this would allow people to import into the UK certain products that have been made using Russian oil but refined in third countries.
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D
And the key thing here, and it was in, in the legal text that I saw last night which was published and anyone could have, could have found it, was the reference to diesel and jet fuel.
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C
Right.
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D
And then there's another reference to liquefied natural gas. We'll just focus on the diesel and jet fuel. That's obviously a reference to two byproducts of the petrochemical industry that are very specifically problematic for the uk, that we are dependent on imports for both of these products, less so, for example, for petrol, but diesel jet fuel. And so this, this was clearly specifically exempted. Now what. It wasn't the ca. It wasn't the case that it had been enacted and then it was taken away. It was the clear intention to include it in some sanctions.
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A
And because when the government was first start. First started talking about this new round of sanctions in October last year.
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D
Yeah.
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A
They had said or hinted that they would include these products. Yeah.
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D
And so the backst story here is a lot of Russian crude ends up in essentially India and it gets refined into these products. And then there's a question mark about whether it counts as Russian or not, which is quite interesting. We won't go there today. So the rest of the sanctions went forward and then these sanctions did not go forward. You know, and I checked it out with government advisors that I knew because I thought, well, this is really rather interesting because. Of course.
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A
And, and Chris, because it looks like a softening towards Russia by the government.
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D
Well, so the question is, what's the counterfactual? Is Your counterfactual that all of this was intended to go ahead and they haven't gone ahead with this and therefore it's a softening, a loosening, a U turn. Or is your counterfactual? Well, yesterday there weren't any sanctions in place, but, you know, 90 of them, I don't know what the number is, have gone ahead and they're just phasing in the other one, you know, because.
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A
Yeah, Chris, the government's argument here, and I'm sure you've been hearing this from lots of ministers and advisors trying to sort of rescue the situation from their point of view today, which is that the overall sanctions on Russia are now greater. It's just that this particular bit of the sanctions package which was going to go ahead or had been mooted is now not happening or will not happen straight away.
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C
Yes, and they acknowledge that they got themselves in a right old tangle with trying to explain this today and they've acknowledged that publicly. Chris Bryant, the Minister, acknowledging that in the House of Commons and the essence of it as Faisal was unpicking there is where your starting line is. So relative to what was announced in the autumn and therefore planned, there has not been as much of an advance in tightening sanctions as was originally planned. But it is also true to say that they are tighter than they were, but with these carve outs exemptions or whatever you want to call them, because of the changing circumstances around jet fuel and diesel and liquefied natural gas. Now, the government has been at pains for obvious reasons to not come across as being, well, bluntly soft on Russia. But ultimately they've got a trade off to wrestle with here. And I think what I was struck by repeatedly, both in the Prime Minister's answers in the House of Commons at lunchtime and then in the lengthy briefing that we have with Downing street officials and others afterwards, was there was a curious and repeated lack of willingness for them to plainly make the case for what they were doing. And I think underneath that. Well, firstly was it's quite complex and you've got to make sure you know what you're saying in order to not confuse yourself and confuse the people you're talking to. And then secondly, they were just desperate, again, back to that first point, not to come across as soft on Russia.
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A
And this is how it sounded at Prime Minister's questions when Kemi Badenok was asking about it.
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D
He is now choosing to buy dirty Russian oil. That money will be used to fund
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B
the killing of Ukrainian soldiers. Isn't he ashamed?
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A
And also Faisal there's a very close comparator here, which is the EU has got its own big sanctions package which includes sanctions on these products. So there's a comparison there.
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D
There's no doubt that plainly at the margins the government has facing some issues or potential issues if the Strait of Hormuzzi continues to be blockaded, have decided to prioritize cost of living issues. And that is interesting because, you know, certainly from, from my reading of it at G7 summits and the like and NATO summits, it seemed like the UK wanted to be the sort of frontier of toughness against Putin in terms of Ukraine, that there are, you know, when you hear from the Ukrainians, they're like, you know, why you're paying through the back door. Even when they're sanctions, you're paying, you know, because of the derivatives of Russian oil that end up on the world market via refineries. You're paying for the bombs that end up in, in Kiev and, and the like. And this, you know, does mean essentially what's going to happen is that the Indian refineries, which cannot get oil from the Gulf now, are going to sweep up all this Russian oil on the market and refine it into jet fuel and diesel, and that is now an acceptable product in the markets. Now, they will say it's temporary, but they've given us no idea as to how long this lasts. I presume it will last as long as the blockade of the straightformus mass.
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C
Yeah, on that point we were asking Danny street about precisely that. And the curiosity and part of the tangle around the communication of all of this was their emphasis that it was temporary. But of course that will involve them concluding that, you know, conditions have changed sufficiently for them to remove these sort of these exemptions, these waivers that they don't like being called waivers. And you get yourself into a slightly, one of those circular kind of conversations about when is something temporary versus when is something permanent if you have to do something to stop something that would otherwise be permanent becoming temporary, if you see what I mean. In other words, if you buy a house or a flat, is that a temporary thing because one day you might sell it, or is it permanent until you take a decision that you no longer want to keep it? Anyway, there was that kind of conversation was swirling kind of round and round. One point to add that I know folk in government are keen to emphasize when they hear the Kemi Badenok critique today, is the argument that they make. And again, it goes back to that whole business about where your start line is they make the case that in the round, the package of sanctions that the UK has on Russia now are considerably greater than they were when the Conservatives were in office. So you can have an argument about the moral case of leaning towards cost of living concerns and jet fuel and summer holidays and all of that, versus the anguish that we've heard, the frustration that we've heard publicly from Ukraine today in response to this. But the government, as I say, make that longer term argument about the ratchet of sanctions that has been going on over the, you know, since the, since the full scale invasion.
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A
And Faisal talking of the cost of living. That's what Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, is going to be doing in a big way on Thursday. She's got a speech which sounds like she's going to announce quite a long list of things that the government hopes will help people with, with prices and inflation. And we got a bit of a preview of some of those measures today.
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D
We did, we did. There was in particular what's, you know, I think is a significant change, although it doesn't cost a huge amount of money, which was that the fuel duty rise, which is the sort of rebound from the cut of 5p in fuel duty that was announced all the way back during the Russia invasion of Ukraine. We're just talking about it when the oil price went up and then never got wound back up again. So she announced at the budget last budget that it would go back up in September. They have now pushed that back till the end of the year. So you can see why this, this is what, you know, the speculation around this was over the weekend and we've, Chris, have reported it. It's always important to wait until what's actually announced. And so actually to push that back three months is a far more modest policy.
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A
Yes.
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D
Than the headline may have suggested canceling it, for example, even pushing it to the end of the financial year, which would have been March. So it's a, you know, it's modest. They've also done an interesting thing around red diesel, which is important for farmers. They've cut that duty by a third and they've announced a 12 month holiday for vehicle excise for haulers, which saves £600. Definitely not to be, not to be sniffed at. So they're trying to help. I think they are helped by the fact that they have probably got more tax revenue in from the fact that oil prices have been higher, by the way, just to, you know, to, to, to, to, to put a, put a line under the previous conversation. So is Vladimir Putin which might change geopolitics. So. Yeah, so, so they've started to use that. But I think the bigger picture is that there has been frenetic, one might argue, even splenetic activity, trying to manage down prices wherever they see that they might go up. And, and this is a set.
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A
What's your definition of splenetic?
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D
Well, just sort of slightly random.
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A
Right.
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D
You know, sort of in every day.
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A
All with the same goal, though.
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D
Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, and it's just like, you know, looking in every direction at the same time.
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A
You can say they've done a thorough analysis of what tools they've got.
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D
Well, they just want to do it in every, you know, it's, it's, it's atypical. I would say. Normally you leave the control of inflation to the bank of England, but, and this is what's interesting about today's inflation figures, which we make, we may come on to this started at the budget last, last year, where you can almost see the footprints or the fingerprints of, of the treasury and the Chancellor trying to work out, well, the official measure of inflation is going to spike up high. It spiked up really high in April last year. How do we sort of, how do we affect what goes into this number in every way possible to make sure it goes up less? And they did the vehicle exercise duty, they did water, they did a couple of other things and in, indeed functioned. It worked, actually. There was an, There was a much better than expected inflation number of going to go all go up during the Iran war. But the last set of numbers. And again, we've had a few of these things where, especially given the political backdrop, you would have, you know, if you've kissed army, you're thinking, well, two years of pain starts to yield some visible consequences that are positive. And you see it not just in inflation numbers, but in the underlying inflation numbers which show the inflation may be starting to become less sticky. So that's where we got. And they're now trying to do the same thing essentially for the wave of inflation coming from the Gulf.
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A
And Chris, this morning I woke up to headlines that sounded like the government was going to introduce price caps in the shops on, on staple food items, although it was a bit more nuanced than that. But as I'm now thinking about what I'm gonna have for my tea, that's been comprehensively rubbish as an idea.
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C
Yeah. And what we had a bit of an element of in the kind of arc of this story today was the government attempting to den Deny something that actually people weren't claiming they were suggesting occasionally. One of the joys of Westminster, Westminster reporting, I think if we take a couple of steps back. Firstly, there's a fascinating conversation going on in government circles, both at a UK level and in Scotland. You may have heard John Swinney, the First Minister of Scotland, on the Today program earlier this week. They are making different arguments around the whole question of prices and supermarkets, but they both overlap to the extent to which here are two governments weighing up what they think they can reasonably do to try and directly have an impact on the cost of the basics that we all need when we turn up to buy the, to buy the groceries. So what's going on inside government right now at Westminster and has been for a while, is that the Chancellor and the treasury are talking to the supermarkets. That's still ongoing. It's not going to come to a head with a kind of, you know, big headline conclusion in the context of what we'll hear from Rachel Reeves on Thursday. It's got a longer sort of tail to it than that. And they're working out in those conversations with the supermarkets. Is there stuff other trade offs here where maybe we can go, in broad terms, maybe we can go a bit easier on them, on some of the regulations that they grumble to us, cost them a lot of money and make the whole thing of doing their business harder in return for something that, that punters will notice in the shops, basically some sort of voluntary agreement about prices of the basics, etc. They're at pains to say this isn't about government imposed price caps. And I think there's perhaps an acknowledgement that maybe after this conversation runs its course, it doesn't necessarily come to anything. The reason it saw the light, Adam, right now was not because the government charged out the door to announce something. It's because those in the retail sector who are on the other side of the table in these meetings started talking about it. That's how it ended up, ended up kind of out there in the, in the bloodstream of news.
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A
Now, talking of punters, Rachel Reeves had a encounter with a voter when she was at a petrol station talking about the measures she'd announced today about, about fuel prices. And here, well, here's how it went and this is the least sweary bit of it that we could find.
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C
You're ruining the country. Get Keir Starmer out.
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A
Look, England flags.
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C
You're useless. Labour Party is useless.
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A
I love our country and one of
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B
the things about our country is good manners, not Very British.
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A
And he's talking about the England flags on his van. Chris, what's your take on that four court encounter?
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C
I wrestle with things like this when we see them and they come into our newsroom because, of course, you want a hearty political debate, involves kind of heckling and robust conversations and all the. And all the rest of it. But then, of course, people in public life need to go about their business kind of as safely as they can. I don't think there was any physical threat there to the Chancellor, but it's obviously kind of personally uncomfortable when you're on the receiving end of that kind of stuff. I thought actually, in hearing the Chancellor engaging with that guy and sort of giving a bit of what for in return, you sort of saw a. And, you know, Faisal sees more of the Chancellor than I do, but I think you saw a bit of the Chancellor there that you do see sometimes away from the cameras, but you don't see on camera all that. All that often, which was her willing to, you know, sort of, sort of sock it back, really take on the take on the argument. And I think it is also worth saying, and of course, you know, people will offer their views, whatever their political opinions, in the direction of politicians. It was pretty clear from the full exchange, if that's what you can call it, the full contribution from the guy in the van that he was, you know, he was, you know, he's quite a fan of reform and Nigel Farage and not a fan of Labour. You know, his views were, I think, fair to say, very clear cut.
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A
And Nigel Farage has put out an appeal on social media to find the white van man so that he can buy him a drink. Classic Nigel Farage. Faisal, do you know what it reminds me? It reminded me of two things. One Rachel Reeves related and one not Rachel Reeves related. Do you remember when the glitter guy stormed the stage at the Labour Party conference and poured glitter over Keir Starmer? There's an amazing bit of video of Rachel Reeves sat in the front row just going, for goodness sake. And it's just, she's so angry. But also it's quite hilarious. And the other thing it reminded me of was another Chancellor going to a petrol station. Do you remember when Rishi Sunak was announcing the 5P and he appeared to not know how to use a contactless card? Oh, he went to pay for it. And also he borrowed someone else's car for the photo op.
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D
The petrol station peril for any Chancellor. Well, there's an article in that and
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A
Chris Last thing for you, Wes Streeting, the now former Health Secretary, he did a speech at the weekend to that. That think tank, but today he was doing the classic resignation statement in. In Parliament. And this was as part of the debate around the King's speech. What was you.
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C
What.
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A
What did you think about his message
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C
so in advance that it wasn't going to be a kind of Geoffrey Howe moment, it wasn't going to be a kind of a demolition of what you know, of the Prime Minister and, you know, the reality of serving in government, all the rest of it. It was billed in advance by his team as future focused, looking ahead. And I think broadly it was exactly that. You know, there was a huge dose, as you would expect from a departing cabinet minister, of kind of pride in what they chalk up as their achievements in office. And there's personal elements of it there. For. We're Streeting as a cancer patient in recent years and then finding himself, you know, at the top of the. The sort of pyramid of England's National Health Service. The bit that stood out for me, there was some overlap with some of the riffs and rhetorical devices that he used in his. In his interview at the Weekend. I'm thinking through my notebook to try and find the quote, and I can't
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A
because I think I brought them. We still can.
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C
That's the one. There was a sort of almost a barmasque twist to some of that, but the bit that stood out for me today was a riff about young people and a sense that young people have been let down. And he quoted from a poll from a while ago about how many young people in Britain would be willing to fight for their country and how relatively low that number was. And he argued that he didn't believe it and that he made an argument about the sacrifices that young people made during the pandemic, when they were, on average, the least medically vulnerable, but made considerable sacrifices for the rest of society, including, broadly speaking, older folk who were much more. More vulnerable. So there is a. An interesting riff and appeal to younger people, particularly at a time when I think Labour generally is, well, fearful of losing votes in all sorts of directions, but perhaps particularly amongst younger people, in the direction of the Green Party.
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D
I want to ask Chris questions. I have a theory that's football politics related.
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C
Oh, yeah?
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D
Which is. I think we'll be able to tell maybe if the Prime. About the Prime Minister's longevity in his own brain, if he decides to go to the Champions League final in Budapest to watch his beloved Arsenal, which I'm sure he would love to do.
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A
Right.
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D
But may.
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A
And when is that?
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D
That's a week on Saturday.
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C
Oh, and it's your theory that if, if all of last week hadn't happened and all the rest of it, he might think that that would look a bit sort of gratuitous and he better knocks. He's got a country to run. But if he goes in this context,
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A
he's maybe thinking retirement.
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C
You might be thinking, why not? Because this is a big deal.
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D
It might be a sign there's a theory. Have you been told he's going to go?
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C
I don't know is the honest answer as to whether or not he's going to go. I mean, I think, you know, newscasters probably aware of this, but it's worth saying, isn't it? I mean, he is a bonafide proper real deal Arsenal fan. You know, prime ministers of all sorts of political persuasions will occasionally have a mild or indeed barely any interest in football and maybe feign a certain element of it. Here it is the real deal with him. It's a really interesting point that Faisal, because I couldn't help but wonder, but maybe this isn't fair that there was a little bit of D mob happy in him at Prime Minister's questions.
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D
I thought today it's a long while.
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A
Yes, because there was a bit where he accidentally said he'd done a trade deal with North Korea and then somebody asked him a note and he then read out the note and corrected the record that he meant South Korea.
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C
I had a note saying that I inadvertently said we did a trade deal with North Korea rather than South Korea.
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B
That would be breaking news and not very good. So before I refer to the privileged
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C
committee, can I correct the record, Mr. Speaker, in that regard? It was a slip of the tongue, but a pretty unfortunate one.
- [24:11]
A
I thought he seemed more jocular than he's been at any point in the last few years.
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C
There's a couple of of well written and well delivered gags. One at the expense of the Green Party, one at the top when he was talking about a high achieving residence of Manchester moving on. And it was a gag about Pep Guardiola, the outgoing Manchester City manager, you know, but. But there was a line towards the end when a Lib Dem MMP asked him to congratulate some successful Lib Dem councillors. And normally a Prime Minister would just kind of do that. He'd congratulated the new Green MP for Gordon and Denton in Greater Manchester when she asked a question because it's the first time she'd done it at PMQs. It's just sort of the normal courtesy and he just said, said oh no, I'm not going to congratulate the councils. And part of me just thought, you know, I don't know again, maybe I'm over reading it. Maybe he will have had a spring in his step because of the football.
- [24:55]
D
Yes. Last night he probably, probably turned up at the Emirates undercover.
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C
Yeah, five in the morning. Yeah, exactly. With a, you know, whistle and a scarf and whatever and so you know, the football thing and on a human level, you know, frankly, you know, this week has been considerably better than last for him. But then I just did wonder and again I'm no psychologist so maybe I'm overdoing it but the, that sort of sense of, you know, he must realize that in all likelihood as a result of last week, you know, who knows if it's weeks or it's months or whatever but there's perhaps not probably not that long left in the, in the role and was it, was there a bit of that playing out and yeah, I think you're right. Frazzle. Maybe, maybe that is a, a straw in the wind to Mark if he makes that it makes the trip to the Champions League final.
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A
Or maybe he'll just be invited for his first bilateral with the new Hungarian prime minister.
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D
Yeah. And the rave dancing health minister. Yeah, that picture.
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A
No.
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D
Oh yeah, he was.
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A
Let's save that for another episode.
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C
We're not talking about James Murray here then.
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D
No, this is a Hungarian sort of. Yeah, serious rave dancing at his inauguration.
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A
Okay. Well worth watching on the video on
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D
social media and I think I just have to say I think I probably misused the word splenetic. I didn't. Yeah, you picked me up on this is. I've. I had, I was trying to look at, you know, sanctions policy until 2 in the morning and I probably. Yes.
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A
Splenetic is an adjective. Describe someone who's bad tempered. Annoyed I met.
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D
Oh, maybe I've just missed do you know, occasionally I'm pretty old now these days but occasionally you find you've been
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A
using
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D
it's because it rhymed with frenetic.
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C
Yeah.
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A
Sky News viewers hearing you say
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D
hopefully someone. I'm looking at the editing. Edit that bit.
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A
No, leave it in, leave it in. But you two can go. So Chris, thank you very much.
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C
I think the outburst bit of the definition, I've just looked it up as well. That's kind of about right, I think
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A
but anyway, I don't think it is. I'm Trying to help you. Right, Chris, Goodbye, Tara, Faisal, go and read the dictionary now. In other news today, the Climate Change Committee, the independent body which marks the Government's homework when it comes to climate change policy, has done something a little bit out of the ordinary today from what they normally do. We're quite used to them saying, oh, the Government's off track and its pledges to cut down on carbon emissions. But what they've done today is published a huge report about the other side of the climate change coin, which is known in the jargon as adaptation. What things are we all potentially going to have to do to our homes, our workplaces, our lifestyles, our infrastructure to cope with the changes that are already happening in the climate, the things that are already baked in, whatever happens with emissions reductions? And one of the authors of the report is the Chief Executive of the Climate Change Committee. She's been on newscast a few times before. It's Emma Pinchbeck and I had a chat with her today. Emma, hello. Hello, and welcome to the studio. Yeah, it's jazzy down the line. Yeah. So just explain where this report fits into sort of the portfolio of things that the Climate Change Committee does, because this is not about cutting carbon emissions and stopping global warming, is it?
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B
Yeah, confusingly, I admit, the Climate Change Committee actually has two committees, not one. We've got the one that people tend to know us for, which looks at emissions reduction and the net zero target,
- [28:10]
A
and marking the government's homework.
- [28:12]
B
And marking the government's homework. And we do that for the UK government and for the devolved nations. But we have a whole other committee whose job it is to look at climate change risks in the economy and then to advise on how we might adapt to those, not regardless of what happens on mitigation, but to accommodate for the fact that the weather is changing anyway. And that is the report we put out this morning. And like with, with net zero, we only do this advice every five years, so it's a big deal. And then we also mark the homework, but we only do that every two years.
- [28:40]
A
When you talk about the effects of the changing climate that we're already feeling, I mean, people are notoriously bad at kind of monitoring what the weather is actually like, what's a way of explaining what we're experiencing.
- [28:52]
B
So we're already living in a very changed environment. If you think about the heat wave of 2022, followed by 18 months of wet weather with drought in places like Cumbria to Scotland in the southeast, these are the sorts of weather events that start to become typical as opposed to infrequent and the sort of thing we write about as remarkable. So what we're saying today is we think we should be prepared for 2 degrees of warming on average by 2050 globally, which in the UK means more of the summers, like the one in 2022 is sort of normal temperatures hitting more like 45 degrees at the extreme rather than 40 degrees. More people, therefore, at risk of dying in extreme heat events or people getting ill because of heat flooding, like today, but worse. So more houses, more buildings, more communities flooding, different kinds of flooding. So more surface water flooding because rainfall will be 60% more intense. And then, conversely, having just said it'll be wetter and rainier, more periods of drought. So really inconvenient water, wrong times in
- [29:58]
A
the wrong places and.
- [29:59]
B
Yeah.
- [30:00]
A
And why have you plumped for 2 degrees of warming? Because, of course, people might, who remember the Climate Change conference and all the stuff about net zero, know that that is, That's. That's one of the targets in the Paris Climate Change Agreement. I didn't think we were even on course for that at the moment.
- [30:17]
B
We can't rule out 4 degrees, actually, which is why the advice is prepare for 2 degrees of warming and maybe 4 degrees of warming by 2100, based on what we can see governments doing on mitigation. But it's a range of ambitions. If governments did absolutely everything they've committed to do and technology continues to improve well below 2 degrees, well, technology at least is going well, but well below 2 degrees is still very much achievable. And we're really keen to say that, that this doesn't rule out the net zero target. Aiming for 1.5. The science is that you can actually hit 2 degrees and then eventually return to 1.5 as well. But I'm expecting to see scientists say a bit more about that later this year, because the temperatures were at. We're at 1.4 degrees of warming. We've gone over 1.5 with other weather effects globally. So this report is really about the insurance.
- [31:03]
A
Yes. You know, we're talking about climate change rather than adaptation. So I'll get back on. I'll get back on target. So one of the. One of the.
- [31:09]
B
I enjoyed that pun, thank you.
- [31:11]
A
One of the stats you've got in the report is that by 2050, 92% of homes in Britain are likely to overheat. What does that actually mean?
- [31:22]
B
So that means that our current housing stock, which again, sounds like science speak, but most homes in this country, our houses were not built for these kinds of temperatures. So we're speaking in London. If you were in London in the 2022 heat wave, you will have experienced what it's like trying to keep a London house cool. We don't have external shading. Our houses are not particularly well insulated from cold or from heat. We're packed into kind of urban environments with not much green in. In a lot of the country, if you look outside of heat, at flooding, we've built houses on floodplains or houses where there's risks of surface water flooding. And again, no green to take away that water. So the chair of the committee, Baroness Brown, has been saying all day that we've built the country for a different world than the one we'll be in. And we've got to make sure that all our infrastructure in the way that we live is suitable to quite a different climate. Even if we reduce emissions and take action as soon as possible, we will be living in a different world. And so this is the insurance policy against that change.
- [32:23]
A
Yeah. And in terms of overheating homes, so is that 92% of homes are going to be, at some point a day when it's really unbearably hot inside, as opposed to basically gonna have to kind of knock your house down and start again, because it's going to be unlivable.
- [32:37]
B
To be clear. Not a recommendation.
- [32:39]
A
No. That was a sort of extreme example. For rhetorical purposes.
- [32:42]
B
Yeah. Uncomfortable. So if you think that human body temperature is 37 degrees, you're talking about homes that don't get below that temperature, indoors or working environments at the same. And there are things we can do about that. We can put that shading on homes, we can plant more trees and shade streets, but also we can put in air conditioning. So one of the things we're saying is maybe not in homes, but certainly in hospitals, in schools and care homes. In care homes where there are people who are really vulnerable to heat, we need to do that. And it's not just about discomfort. When we talk to the public, actually, they're like, we can handle a bit of discomfort. We all can.
- [33:19]
A
We've all been in hot places all the time.
- [33:21]
B
Yeah, Right. But this is about the people who. For whom it becomes an illness, who can't regulate their body temperature. And that includes pregnant women, very small children and babies, the elderly, and people with underlying illnesses. Which is why the advice today focuses on air conditioning in hospitals and schools and care homes and places like that.
- [33:39]
A
And because already thousands of people a year die from it being Too hot.
- [33:43]
B
Yeah. That's already 3,000 people.
- [33:45]
D
Yeah.
- [33:46]
B
And if we don't take action by 2050, we think that could be around 10,000 people.
- [33:50]
A
Wow.
- [33:51]
B
Every heat wave.
- [33:52]
A
Also, you've got an idea for offices and workplaces.
- [33:55]
B
We do have an idea for offices and workplaces, which is that there is a minimum working temperature in the uk. Says everything about where we've been historically.
- [34:05]
A
Well, worried about it being too cold. Too hot. Yeah.
- [34:07]
B
Yes. But now we're saying, like a lot of countries that are hot in the summer, we might need a maximum working temperature. And this isn't about, like, downing tools once the thermometer reaches a particular level. It's about making employers understanding that workplaces need to be cool once it gets beyond a particular temperature. It's about personal protective equipment, PPE being lightweight or suitable for conditions. It's about thinking about working practices for people who have to work outside. I've got cousins who are tree surgeons, for example. You know, there are things that we can do to help keep people safe. And we know from 2022 that a lot of outdoor workers lost. Lost money and the economy lost productivity because construction workers, outside workers, just could not go to work because it was too hot in the middle of the day.
- [34:56]
A
Yeah. And have you heard from the Government yet about whether they're going to take up that idea?
- [34:59]
B
No, and we won't, because under the law, we advise six months before the Government publishes their own climate change risk assessment. So this advice feeds into that. And then the first sight of them being able to have a big strategy for this will be the National Adaptation Program. The. The next iteration of which is due in 2028, so we'll see a response from them in 2027.
- [35:20]
A
This is a long process. It's 2050.
- [35:24]
B
There is a 25 year plan and there is time. Baroness Brown and the committee have been really keen also to say that we have not done this historically, so we've had 20 years of knowing there will be risks and not taking action. We're doing our advice in a slightly different way. So we're presenting the risks, but also showing what the potential solutions could be. The cost ideas, as you say, about how we might adapt, and we're hoping that that causes government to really act. This has to be a line in the sand. The impacts are already here and they're going to get worse.
- [35:53]
A
There's so many other things we could discuss because it is a huge rapport and there are lots of consequences of it. No, thank you for giving us so much to Think about flooding. I mean, basically, it seems to me we just need to spend more money each year on flood defences. So the sort of thing that we do already, but just more of it. There's not some kind of massive different thing we need there.
- [36:13]
B
Yes and no. So flood defense defenses is a big part of it, but different kinds of flood defences as well. So the concrete ones, but also the natural ones. So thinking about having habitats that can act as water breaks in the landscape. But then we also have to start thinking about where we're building and doing one of two things. Not building when the flood risk is really high, and secondly, if we are building somewhere which is likely to flood at some point, making sure that those homes and businesses and communities have simple flood protection measures in place from the get go. And we do social research as part of our advice. We spoke to the public and they just obviously completely common sense get the idea. If you're putting up a building, it should be future proof from day one. And that's also the most cost effective thing to do. And then the other thing with flooding is there's a really high risk of surface water flooding. We experienced this in London in the wet weather a couple of years ago. We had 30 tube stations that were closed because of the surface water flooding, bits of East London houses flooding. That's because of all the concrete in our cities. So we're going to need to have more green spaces, places that water can run off. You know, thinking about water in urban landscapes as well as traditional places that
- [37:21]
A
flood our food supply.
- [37:23]
B
Yes.
- [37:24]
A
Are we going to run out of certain things?
- [37:25]
B
In some scenarios there are risks of food shortages. So one of the things we've looked at in this report is international risks and like imported risks, risk stuff that happens overseas that affects us. And if you think about what's happened in Iran, it's not the same thing, but it's a good example of where we've got vulnerabilities and stuff like supply chains, fertilizer, Right? Yeah. So agriculture sector, our food supply chains and so on. So we've asked the major supermarkets and food retailers to do basically an audit of their supply chains. The government actually has powers to ask lots of different bits of the economy to do that kind of audit and work out where they're at. The risks are. We think that's probably a good idea and then we can work out what we need to do. One of the issues on the adaptation side is there isn't very good data in some parts of the economy. Other things we know about Food. We think climate change will act as an additional inflationary driver on the prices of food, which could be 1 to 2% on inflation by 2050. On the early numbers, which, given how hard it is already for people, is not great news. On the farming side, if you've got worries about supply chain risks globally, then you need to make sure you can produce food domestically. And to keep farming viable, we need quite a lot of change in agriculture and for the government to help farmers with that. Different kinds of crops, looking after other animals differently, storing water on farms. So quite a bit in there on food too.
- [38:44]
A
And just by storing water on farms, you mean when you see a field and it might look like it's flooded, but actually that's storing water so that it doesn't.
- [38:52]
B
That's one kind of water storage on farms. Yeah. So allowing land to flood, but also storage containers.
- [38:58]
A
Oh, right, okay.
- [38:58]
B
Yeah. Like reservoirs. Mini reservoirs, I suppose. And there is a genuine regulation that stops farmers, presumably for good reasons back in the day, from sharing water with other farms. And if you think about the way climate risks will happen, they'll often be regional and water scarcity in particular will be regional. So we need to be able to move water around and that includes on
- [39:16]
A
farms and on the food point, do you think we'll need to have national emergency stockpiles of things?
- [39:22]
B
Some other countries do that.
- [39:23]
A
So there is something like a giant rice mountain.
- [39:25]
B
Yeah. Or wheat, for example. And in Europe that's already happened because of the war in Ukraine and shortages of wheat. We haven't gone that far in the advice, but it is an area that we've looked at. It is one of many options to make sure we've got secure and resilient food systems. But I think the message from us is national security in a increasingly fragile world also needs to consider climate change risk.
- [39:50]
A
How much is all this going to cost? Because I know you put some kind of potential price tags on things.
- [39:55]
B
Yeah. It's the first time we've tried to do this and I think it's hopefully a valuable contribution to the debate. And we'll build on the numbers in the next iteration of the advice. But we think It's a roughly 11 billion pound per year investment from now to 2050. That's about 2% of the overall investment that goes into the economy every year. Roughly half and a half state, or what economists call fiscal, and half from the private sector. So about, I guess, £5 billion per year from government. And most of that is cooling and flood defences.
- [40:26]
A
And does that include, I Don't know, somebody buying air conditioning for their house.
- [40:30]
B
Yeah. So it's the whole. It's the whole thing. And if you look at the report and all of it should be published online today because we're a public body, you can see the costs of each technology or measure that we've got in the report. I should say that stacks against the impacts, though. So the really important thing is the rate of return on that investment. Accepting it's a difficult period to make investments upfront. But the rate of return for a lot of these measures is like 40 to 1. So if you put air conditioning into a care home, the return on that investment is 40 to 1 in terms of the value to society and the economy. So it's worth doing is what we're saying.
- [41:04]
A
And just on a sort of. And it's not a political question, I suppose it is a political question and I know you don't like to get into politics, but do you feel that we're in a political environment moment where politicians are ready to hear these messages and do something about it, or is a bit of you a bit worried that they're maybe not?
- [41:20]
B
This is, I think, common sense advice that in my experience, we've been talking to all the main political parties about the advice in the run up to launching it. This is about keeping the British way of life as we know it and protecting people and places and sort of trying to preserve the business as usual. And I think it kind of speaks to lots of different political views. And then if you look at the polling on this amongst the public, everyone understands climate change is happening now. There might be on the edges people that question why and how, but they understand that their world is changing. And there's something like 81 of the public thinking that this needs to be fixed by government. And that statistic is consistent across all kinds of voter for all kinds of political party. So I don't think this is the divisive issue actually. And we need to talk about climate change. One of the things we say in the advice is it is time for a national conversation about this and what we do about it and some of those trades offs we've talked to. People need to understand what they are and government needs to understand what trade offs the public want.
- [42:31]
A
Absolutely fascinating. Thanks for coming in. Also, let's just do some diarizing because we're both going to be at the Hay Literary Festival this weekend, aren't we? So I'm doing newscast on from there on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. And I think we're doing an event together, aren't we?
- [42:43]
B
Are doing an event together. I've never been to habe. I'm very excited. It's not that far from where I live.
- [42:48]
A
It's an interesting festival because it's full of people who are just very engaged in the stuff that we've just been talking about, the stuff that we talk about on Newscast every day. And also it's a great opportunity to meet meet newscasters in person because the BBC bit is free. Our tent is free, so you can just turn up.
- [43:04]
B
Oh, I saw loads of BBC stuff across the program.
- [43:06]
A
Yeah, we're lining up some interesting guests to come and speak to us as well. So I'll see you, I'll see you on Saturday and I'll speak to you tomorrow when there will be another episode of Newscast. And we're also cooking up a new series called By Election Cast. And I'm sure you can work out for yourselves what the theme of that might be. And that will be recorded on Thursday and coming your way on Friday. Bye bye.
- [43:28]
C
Newscast. Newscast from the BBC.
- [43:30]
B
From one newscaster to another, thank you so much for making it to the end of this episode. You clearly do, in the words of Chris Mason, ooze stamina. Can I also gently encourage you to subscribe to us on BBC Sounds? Tell everyone you know and don't forget, you can email us anytime@newscastbc.co.uk or if you're that way inclined, send us a WhatsApp on 033-01-23948. Be assured, I promise we listen to everyone.
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D
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