Will Rachel Reeves' summer tax cuts make a difference to the cost of living? | BBC Newscast

Añadido: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]Hello, it's Adam in the newscast studio >> and it is Chris in the newscast studio >> and it's Joe Pike also in the newscast studio >> and we're joined by Helen Miller, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Hello.

[00:00:09]>> Hello.

[00:00:09]>> And it's your favorite day of the year.

[00:00:11]Helen, when there's a political debate about capital gains tax, which I live for these days, >> love talking about. Uh but before we get into tax, actually no, there is a tax element to the first thing we're going to talk about. Um Rachel Reeves is doing a sort of doing a jet too and taking money off people's summer holidays.

[00:00:26]Yeah. Yeah.

[00:00:26]>> If they're in the UK and they're with their kids and they're going out for the day.

[00:00:30]>> Yes. And in her announcement today, she managed and her team were quite surprised about this on the upside. They managed to keep a kind of rabbit in the hat to actually announce this this whole thing about this this cutting VA. This this brief tax reduction on fun. I think you can probably be sort of badized, can't you? Or family fun. Uh that is going to kick in as Scotland schools break up for the summer at the tail end of June. I think June the 25th. and will run until England, Wales, and Northern Ireland schools return for the autumn term at the beginning of September. VAT cut from what, 20% to 5% on things like what? Zoos and museums and uh >> soft play.

[00:01:08]>> Soft play.

[00:01:09]>> Not a place I've ever been.

[00:01:10]>> Oh yeah. Our kids absolutely loved it.

[00:01:12]>> How much does a soft play cost?

[00:01:15]>> I don't know. Six, seven quid.

[00:01:16]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But but given the given the how appealing they are to kids of a certain age, that can that can add back up quite quickly.

[00:01:22]>> And they can get bit feral as well, but that's probably a side aside uh >> this isn't parenting hell before.

[00:01:27]>> I was once I once went to a soft play in the company of a friend with his daughter before I had kids and was on all fours on like level four of this quite complicated soft play when I encountered a former colleague of ours on also on all fours coming the other way. That was >> Well, anyway, while you picture that, here's Richard Reeves, the chancellor, announcing this today and not being shouted at by a van driver for once this week.

[00:01:52]>> I recognize that what matters for families is not just getting by, but being able to enjoy time together without worrying about the next bill.

[00:02:00]That is why I am launching the Great British Summer Savings Scheme to help families and support our hospitality sector. So I can today announce a temporary cut in the rate of VAT on summer attractions from 20% to 5% over the summer holidays.

[00:02:19]>> Now at first you think okay government announces they're making theme parks cheaper for families and you think oh that's a bit unusual but then you think actually this is of a piece of quite a few other things the government's been doing this year for the cost of living.

[00:02:31]For example um freezing some rail fairs.

[00:02:35]So trying to come up with a very retail way of helping you feel like the government's on your side, but not necessarily in a way that costs the government and taxpayers shed loads and shed loads of money.

[00:02:45]>> Yeah. And I was thinking with the because with some of this there was a bit of a riff from some of the critics, some critics prior to her standing up at lunchtime today saying, you know, does it to what extent will this add up to something that people can feel and notice? And then the stuff on the VAT on attractions you think of things like theme parks which if you go with a few kids in tow quite expensive actually and so if that >> and also the theme parks themselves for years have been calling for VAT to be cut on attractions. So it's obviously quite a big deal for them and they think it's a bit of a barrier to people coming and spending money at their attractions.

[00:03:19]I mean Helen, what what's your what's the economist's view of this?

[00:03:23]>> I mean I think we shouldn't forget that it is still pretty small beer, right? So on the on the VAT cut and the free bus travel, the government think it'll cost around £300 million. That's the equivalent of about £10 per household.

[00:03:36]Now obviously it's going to be skewed towards households with kids, maybe a bit more for them. Um but this is not a huge a huge saving and of course it depends on the extent to which businesses do pass it on to consumers. I suspect some will, not least because it comes with this big packaging and people will be expecting to see the savings.

[00:03:51]But if you're running an attraction where you've already got more people who want to come than you can accommodate, you haven't got a great incentive to be cutting prices. And of course, some places already run discount schemes for families and kids in summer. So it's not clear how much additionality this will bring. So look, big picture, it is, you know, pretty small. It's clearly kind of a retail retail offer. It's not going to solve the cost of living crisis. But I don't think we should expect government to be shoving money at families in order to fix the cost of living crisis. The real crisis >> Well, because the real c I actually wish we could relabel it. I don't think it's so much a cost of living crisis as a low income growth crisis. The fundamental problem we've got is that prices have been high in the past. It's not really that prices are high, it's that incomes are low relative to those prices. What's going to make us really feel better in a few years time is if income growth was going to be picking up. You can't just shove money. You can't just borrow money from the markets or get raise taxes, shove it at some people and fix that problem. You've got to do all the things that governments need to do to get economic growth going basically. So, on the one hand, look, this is not I don't think we should expect this to be a huge deal. Obviously, for some families, it will help. It sort of reminded me of um you know, when like supermarkets do these discounting posters and you know, it's a great Well, yeah. You know, some cut price strawberries and some Jersey Royals and some free, you know, extra toilet roll. It's a bit like Yeah. Every little helps kind of feel to it, I think. Um but that shouldn't be that shouldn't be read as me saying and therefore the government should have done something huge because I don't think that was necessarily the right the right >> because that's the other thing isn't it with all of this I was sort of pondering with this around this sort of suggestion of you know what can or should governments do in an era where we've perhaps in in the last decade become accustomed to these colossal interventions associated with once in a whatever shocks whether it was the pandemic or the full scale of invasion of Ukraine with furow and then those big energy interventions and and where that leaves the public finances and therefore how governments approach the their decisions in the years after. But then also what we collectively as a society then regard as quote unquote normal as far as interventions are concerned. And then to that point about what we should what should we reasonably expect from governments or what should they what can they best do to try and address these longerterm issues around incomes and the cost of living and the and and how people how affordable things feel to people. Uh Joe, on Helen's point about the price of of beans and Jersey royals, other types of potato are available. Um the announcement we got today is about cutting tariffs, so the import taxes on lots of products, which could shave a couple of pennies off each of those products on the shelves. That's actually a less dramatic or expansive policy than was being discussed yesterday when we were hearing something really quite dramatic in a British political context, but which hasn't happened.

[00:06:30]>> Absolutely. And and I think that is because the backlash against uh against the Treasury and from supermarkets from the government of the Bank of England put a cap on certain products >> was was uh was really significant and uh it it was was not really treated remotely seriously by a lot of people. I suppose Rachel Re is in this odd position where she's trying to uh she's trying to imp improve her reputation quite quickly because she realizes there may be an an end to her position and she arguably some close to her say you know she should stay if there's a new if there is a new prime minister for you know to sort of calm the market and therefore I think what you are seeing is her trying to prove she is creative and inventive in her interventions and today I think has done that in some ways and that the tries have welcomed um significant amounts of what she's done.

[00:07:26]They they argue the sort of background is economic mismanagement over uh many months. But she does she she does if we look at yesterday and today together you know yesterday was really a bit of an embarrassing slightly confusing set of headlines even if today you've got on the BBC's website the lead story you know cheaper holiday trips for for parents. Um, Helen, that the whole I mean, we could spend hours talking about how tariffs and international trade policy works and it would feel a bit like back to the Brexit days, but can can the government really make a difference to the price of food in the supermarket with its trade policy with how much it charges on imports from abroad?

[00:08:04]>> Well, big picture, yes. I mean, tariffs basically are taxes, just differently labeled taxes. And if you put lots of tariffs on things you're bringing into the country, you can make them more expensive. So yes, in principle we should think taxes, tariffs are levers you can you can adjust to change prices.

[00:08:20]The question is are this particular set of measures going to be noticeable? My guess is probably not because in the grand scheme of things tweaking tariffs on nuts and chocolate biscuits, I think it's a good thing in a sense, but I don't think that's going to be hugely noticeable in your food bill. And of course the background is that we expect food prices to be going up across the summer more broadly because of, you know, things like increases in fertilizer prices. So, >> and that food price inflation, as it's called, could be 10% by the end of the year on some measures.

[00:08:48]>> Yeah, it could be really big. And that's what people are going to notice. I think well, people will notice that actually their weekly shop is getting more expensive. They probably aren't going to notice that nuts maybe are a bit cheap.

[00:08:56]And again, it depends on how how supermarkets respond to that. You know, the extent to which you see the price coming down. So, I think yes, tariffs are tariffs are good things to get rid of if you can usually. Um, but we shouldn't expect that to mean big price cuts.

[00:09:07]>> And Chris, there was a long list of things today because there's a lot of measures here and there was some announced yesterday as well. for example, not going ahead with restoring the the 5p cut in fuel duty um and a big discount on f on duty for um holers as well for the next year. Um but nothing on household energy bills and we know that the price cap which is currently in place and keeping bills down with a little extra discount from government policy as well that ends the month after next.

[00:09:34]>> It does. Just picking up on Helen's point and this is the challenge isn't it alongside some of the alongside the the kind of retaily stuff and then talking about theme parks and stuff is that the whole business of things and the same applies with petrol here or diesel things not going up as much as they might otherwise have done is quite a hard sell isn't it? if your your nuts or your marge or whatever has not gone up by as much as it might have done because there's a certain element around the tariff that means it's a reduction but actually >> or your supermarket put the price up last week because the minimum wage has gone up and they're having to pay their younger staff more because that's gone up too.

[00:10:09]>> Sure. All of that into the mix on the on the energy stuff. So the argument that uh over and over again folk in the Treasury have been making well firstly is that it's summer. So they they are conscious of winter coming and contingency planning around around winter. Secondly, the thing they go over and over again to emphasize is this idea, the merit, as they see it, of targeting supports rather than universal support because it's cheaper and because it can be more focused. What we don't know as far as the winter is concerned, well, there's a million things we don't know. We don't know the chances going to be in the winter, do we? We don't know what the situation in the straightforward moves is going to be.

[00:10:43]And crucially, we don't know, and they're still working it through um who they would target and with what kind of support. Uh but they over and over again come back >> and even just like practically how to find those people in the system.

[00:10:56]>> Yeah. Completely completely that and and back to that age old argument that we've had before haven't we on newscast that if you try and create some sort of tearing or some sort of cut off then you can create cliff edges and if you don't do that then it gets very complicated but then if it's universal it's very expensive. So all so all of that but they they say at the moment they are working through what they might do come the winter where obviously people's energy bills are much greater much are more expensive and you spend more on energy. um but they don't know what we're going they're going to do because they don't know what the situation is going to be. the the the phrase I kept hearing was who knows where we'll be come October and that can apply to the individuals I think sometimes who are saying that as well as the >> economic picture internationally and therefore domestically that we will encounter then right so that's one set of numbers to do with people's days out let's have a look at another set of numbers that was published today which is the net migration figure so this is the difference between the number of people leaving the UK and the number of migrants arriving um and so basically how how much the population is growing by because of migration and the number is 171,000, >> which is half what it was in 2024 and back to basically where it was in 2012.

[00:12:03]>> So, >> excluding the pandemic.

[00:12:05]>> Excluding the pandemic when things were skewed both down and very, very up. Um, Joe, when you saw that number, were you surprised?

[00:12:12]>> Well, it fits, Adam, doesn't it? I suppose this series of some government announcements that look like things are actually going pretty positively. West treaty of course just before he jumped um was hailing improvements on waiting list in the NHS in England. Obviously you've got this Chris there must be other things that are on your list.

[00:12:32]>> I mean there's a whole list but I mean I think on the migration thing there there has been a trend in that direction. I mean there's definitely been an argument today about who can claim credit for it with the conservatives saying with with some justification that things that they were doing just before the election have contributed to this to this pushing through. It's things like if you come to the UK as an international student, how many members of your family can you bring with you for example, which is a reform under the conservative.

[00:12:56]>> And there's some suggesting that the numbers are likely to tick upwards. Um but outwardly when we've had such a loud argument, haven't we, for so long around uh migration, I mean going back a very long time pre the Brexit referendum.

[00:13:09]From the government's perspective, this is something given that they've wanted to get this number down. You can have an argument about whether it going up or down is a good thing, but the government is making an argument. wants to get it down and therefore it from its perspective can say this is this is this is good news and the prime minister's absolutely said that as has the home secretary that yeah it's quite a thing isn't it it is quite a number when not that long ago the number was not far shy of a of a million >> and also there's unease in some parts of the Labour party at some of Shabban Mammud's interventions and policies these aren't sort of universally popular amongst the amongst the party it's almost like we're not that far from net migration being in tens of thousands which is what David Cameron's pledge was and which he got completely hammered for of not achieving >> and then as you say if we start picking up on Joe's riff of things that the parallel universe of a scenario where you're less than two years on from a general election with a prime minister who won a landslide majority and then he's looking at a data set that says that the economy is growing a bit more than some people thought that inflation's down perhaps by more than some people thought that rating lists in England are shrinking that net migration is shrinking and then he thinks hang on a minute all of these things outwardly are positive indicators and what's the soundtrack there's basically a leadership election >> underway >> and I don't know you know that kind of parallel universe that he must imagine of did things have to turn out the way they have turned out and why is it that Labour MPs are in the are of the mindset that they are. Well, we know why because look at the elections of a few weeks ago and also an acceptance from Kama's allies as well as his now skeptics of a sense that he has not been able to tell good stories well basically.

[00:15:04]>> And also let's be realistic like it's not as if Kier Starmer had announced 10p off soft play areas last week would have saved off Westing's resation. I mean, they had a king's speech where they laid out legislation for 2 years on loads of things and that wasn't enough.

[00:15:17]>> And also, look, you know, there might be some positive economic news, but there's the the the long long period of it being of it being pretty >> flat for 20 years. And also, small boat uh levels are not not are not in a great place. I mean, they're sort of ticking up. they're not that far off and waiting lists are still high even though they're coming down and the you know and there's lots of obviously you can turn these numbers on their head but it's just an interesting riff when you can point to quite a few days now in the last couple of weeks and indeed the last couple of months where outwardly there have been indicators that from the government's perspective are positive and yet you look at this backdrop >> I think partly it speaks to the fact that some of these problems we've got are going to just take a little while to fix and you have to do some policies and kind of wait for them to start bearing fruit and it's partly that point about setting out a vision right so the vision sort of has to include where we want to get to and it's going to take some time.

[00:16:04]And if people expect things to be fixed really quickly, they're going to be upset because no government is going to be able to fix some of these longunning problems overnight, whether it's migration or growth or any other problem. So, I think part of this disconnect is is about people's expectations about how quickly we can fix some of these issues.

[00:16:21]>> Excellent finger click right into the microphone there. No, excellent podcasting getting all the sound effects in. Um but Helen, is there is there um a future UK where instead of politicians from nearly all political parties worrying that immigration is too high actually loads of reforms are put in net migration basically plunges and then there ends up being a conversation about oh it's now too low. I mean possibly I mean I think you know you can imagine in we've had this before in certain sectors there being shortages of workers where even if you want to train British workers it takes a while to do you think of like health and social care being good examples of that you might think that we get to a place where actually we need more workers part of what we need to do therefore is think now about the kind of workers we might think of needing in the future years what does training look like whether that's you know general training and further education or specific training for specific sectors um in some sense if we don't want higher migration Don't rely on that being the vow which we adjust our labor markets. Thinking about how we like construction work is another example. You talk to house builders, they'll say, well actually it's really hard to get trades. Um and in in previous years we have just uh imported people with those skills but we know we need them. So we can also think about further education colleges and making sure that people are being trained. So so yes, I can imagine that world but I don't think it's inevitable.

[00:17:35]I think we have the power to train uh to train people. No, talking of Wes Streeting, the former health secretary was on Nick Robinson's political thinking podcast, which I learned this morning because I wanted to listen to it on my smart speaker and you have to say open BBC Sounds and play political thinking with Nick Robinson because if you don't say the Nick Robinson bit, it just gives you something different.

[00:17:56]>> Does it really?

[00:17:57]>> Yeah, cuz I normally just play it on my phone, but I wanted the full like surround sound experience in >> what did come on by failing to name him?

[00:18:04]>> Just some random thing. Yeah. How was it in surround sound? I mean, it wasn't really surround sound. It was just slightly less tiny than on my phone, but very interesting listen about 40 minutes. Um, uh, West expanding on lots of the themes that he did in his his speech that he did in in the House of Commons on on Wednesday, particularly about, oh, do we need to flip round the attention on the generations and young people around around his pitch on young people? this that does play to a to a degree to the to Labour's fears about losing younger people in the direction of the Green Party amongst amongst others. But I thought it was an interesting an interesting >> and Helen you were bemoning the lack of policies being talked about by politicians. Wes Street came up with one. He calls it a wealth tax. Basically he would say oh he would equalize the rates of capital gains tax with income tax because CGT rates are lower than income tax.

[00:18:55]>> Yeah. Yeah, and this is this is a broad policy idea that's been talked about um for decades at the IFS and elsewhere. Um so I'm I'm delighted to be, you know, here talking about capital gains tax.

[00:19:05]It's always a good day. I think capital gains tax discussions though I think are a bit tricky because on the one like there are basically two problems with capital gains tax and one of them is really obvious and one of them is really hard to explain. So the obvious one is is the one that everyone gets that capital gains tax rates are lower than income tax rates and that's where you get all these examples about a landlord paying more than a cleaner and that's unfair. cleaner.

[00:19:25]>> Less than a cleaner. Yes. Less than a cleaner. Yeah. The cleaner is paying higher tax rates than landlords.

[00:19:30]>> Um and those kinds of examples are, you know, clear examples of unfairness. Um but the other problem with capital gains tax that no one really notices or at least talks about is that the way the tax base is designed, the definition of what's actually taxed, which includes things like we tax inflationary gains for no good reason. That's actually really bad for investment incentive. So you could >> So walk us through the taxing inflationary gain.

[00:19:51]>> Yeah. So let's imagine you buy an asset of some sort, Chris. just any you've got a business asset and you have a large capital gain over many years >> a soft play center for example >> yeah Chris has a soft play center and it has a large capital gain but actually >> because it's become a more valuable business the properties >> more well it depends if if it's actually that Chris is just really great at running soft play centers and he's uh put a lot of effort in made a really investment he gets a big gain then actually most of that gain should be taxed like earned income because why should you pay less money than than Joe who's just worked hard for a salary But if all that's happened is you've bought an asset and you've held it for 10 years and inflation's happened and actually it's just risen in line with inflation, you haven't made a real gain, you're no better off than you were before. So whacking a good big tax on that actually disincentivizes you from doing it in the first place because now you're worse off than you would otherwise have been.

[00:20:40]>> That's one example of a broader set of issues where the capital gains tax is designed in such a way that actually disincentivizes investment. So if you just put up rates, you make those problems worse. And that's why we've had this yo-yoing effect of capital gains over the years where some politicians say, "Oh, I see the unfairness problem.

[00:20:56]We'll put rates up." And then some say, "Oh, no, entrepreneurship and investment. Let's put the rates down."

[00:21:01]And around and round we go. So the the kind of solution to this is to realize that you can do two things. You can fix the tax base. So don't be taxing inflationary gains and a whole bunch of other things you can do that are more technical that we could talk about, but I won't uh start a tax lecture. and then with a more sensiblely designed capital gains tax that isn't discouraging investment then you can part >> to me that sounds like a lot of work to do to design the new perfect CGT >> it is a lot of work so good the good news is that many of us have been thinking about this for years we know how to do it and I was kind of pleased in what street was saying in that he sounded like he was talking about things like investment allowances and not want to discourage investment so I hope what he has in mind is this fuller set of reforms more like what I'm talking about but it is worth saying, you know, highlighting what you've done.

[00:21:46]>> Has he been in touch?

[00:21:47]>> We talked to we've talked to lots of people, including the civil service for years. I say we've been writing about this for years at the IFS. This is this is not um it's not a new proposal in some ways.

[00:21:55]>> And he has been writing about it before, right? He he wrote a pamphlet about all of this years ago.

[00:22:00]>> Yeah. Um it's an idea that's been picked up by a bunch of people and let's say it's it's not that dissimilar to the Nigel Lawson system that we used to have. It is a bit different, but it's not a million miles away. So, it's not as alien as it sounds, I don't think.

[00:22:11]But if you wanted to do it, there's actually quite a long laundry list of things you'd have to do, including stop forgiving capital gains at death. You know, stop letting people leave the country and having their >> That's the argument that is made by people. I saw him doing on social media today, Rupert Harrison, who um was George Osborne's brain at the Treasury.

[00:22:28]He says, "Oh, whenever you go into the Treasury and you ask them to look at this, they say, "Oh, you're going to raise less money than you think." And also really rich successful entrepreneurs will leave the country.

[00:22:36]>> And it's true. If you just if you just put up rates of capital gains tax, then actually you it wouldn't take too long before you did start losing some money.

[00:22:44]The point being that if you you don't just do that, you also try and you know stop flows at the border, you stop other things. Um if you do enough of that, it's good. I mean one thing that in some ways worried me a bit about what what streeting said which I think we should all be a bit skeptical about is there was a line in there about but of course we'll have lower rates for genuine entrepreneurs >> and that's where all these things fall down because every everyone thinks oh this all sounds great but the genuine entrepreneurs get different rates.

[00:23:09]>> You can't identify in advance who a genuine entrepreneur is after the fact once somebody's got an amazing soft play center and they're doing great then you can say ah that guy that guy did it. But if you're starting a business and you look at businesses you just can't tell.

[00:23:22]And the minute you can't tell, you give a tax break to business owners, it's also all the other people.

[00:23:27]>> Oh yeah. And you need to sort of know in advance so that you can design the tax break until Chris goes to the tax plan and says, you know, I've got my capital gain now. Can I have my lower rate? If it's going to be an incentive, it has to be in advance. So I do get worried about this idea that we've got this great plan, but we're going to do this carve out because those carveouts are exactly the thing that makes and makes it all fall apart.

[00:23:46]>> West Streeting says this will raise 12 billion.

[00:23:50]>> Yeah. Yeah. So, I think that comes from a research report um uh written by a different think tank. My my personal view is that's a bit of a punchy number.

[00:23:58]Um >> too high.

[00:23:59]>> Too high. Yeah. Um but importantly, I mean, we could haggle. I mean, nobody's got great data on on capital gains tax stuff in a way. It's really hard to do revenue estimates. So, it's a bit high for my taste. Um I'd go with something in the single digit billions. But most importantly, what that number assumes is that you do a really full package of things. So you close the borders, you stop uplift at death, so you tax uh gains uh when people die, you um you do this full base reform and you put rates up quite a long way. So if you do all of that, then maybe you're getting that. It does not include carveouts for entrepreneurs for example or so in some sense even that is a high number. you've got to do quite a lot to to get >> and just hearing one element of that as you described it the carve outs at debts given the arguments that we've heard in the last couple of years around you know the inheritance tax changes farmers if if what would effectively be seen as an additional >> tax when someone's died therefore effectively an inheritance tax >> yeah and lots >> it's politically maybe tricky I don't know lots of people mistakenly in my view think that if you pay inheritance tax you shouldn't pay capital gains tax I think that's wrong because you know imagine we both got a big capital gain and you realize it the day before you die and I realize the day after I die.

[00:25:11]Why are we tax differently? An inheritance tax in some is always a second tax. It's always after you've paid your taxes in life, your estate pays more taxes. So I think it makes complete sense that if you're going to have a capital gains tax, you shouldn't be able to avoid it by dying. But it would be it would be a really it would be a really big political thing. But if you don't do it, then you could you're going to slash that um that revenue.

[00:25:32]Another thing to remember, of course, is that people can choose when they I'm getting excited about that. People can choose when they realize their gains. If a reformed government said, "We're going to slash the capital gains tax rate when we come into power."

[00:25:42]>> A lot of people would hold on to their capital gains and that would also trash the revenue that you >> The only reason I was laughing is cuz I thought, "Oh, it's really cute the idea of Chris Mason opening a soft play center and then we start talking about him dying the day before you and it all seemed a little bit dark." Um, anyway, uh, is right. Isn't there also something interesting about what West Street is doing here, which is obviously he wants to think about put himself in a situation where he wants to maybe be a leader, but is he also looking at Rachel Reeves' job too? Is he trying to burnish his economic credentials in case there wasn't a leadership and he wanted a job >> andor being seen to use the language of those within the Labour Party who would regard themselves as to the left of West Streeting, which would be a lot of people within the Labour Party and using the language of a wealth tax that is often used to talk about other things other than this particular mechanism around capital gains tax um is a way of appealing to a uh electorate that at the moment he needs to win over. when you look at some polling of Labour Party members that suggests he's got quite a lot of sort of if you like charming to do of that membership if we get to a point where there is a there is a contest where the Labour Party membership are deciding who is their new leader.

[00:26:49]>> Well, I hope you've been charmed by our analysis tonight. Uh Helen, thank you very much.

[00:26:53]>> Thank you, >> Joe. Thanks to you, too.

[00:26:54]>> Thanks, Adam and Chris. Lovely to see you as well. Thank you. I think I've just about got rid of the sweat from running to the newscast studio during a heat wave that is building by the minute.