Alex Forsyth presented BBC Radio 4’s ‘Any Questions?’ from Northfield School in Billingham on Friday 5 December.
Motley Crew
The show’s panel consisted of a usual mix of journalists and politicians.
Labour peer Shami Chakrabati, Conservative MP Graham Stuart, GB News political editor Christopher Hope, and the Financial Times’ Gillian Tett. The recording of the show can be found here.
Very fine people
GB News will be grateful to the BBC for the invite. Although the company’s owner Paul Marshall has called for the BBC to be broken up, and for its fact-checking service to be shut down.
No local representative
Teessiders will have been disappointed at the lack of local representation. Billingham’s local MP is Business Minister Chris McDonald. There are five other Labour MPs within the Tees Valley. The sole Conservative is Matt Vickers. But Conservative Central Office decided not to risk a run out for Matt. Probably just as well, because he doesn’t fare too well in these scenarios. So, it looks like Graham Stuart had to drive 170 miles there and back from Beverley on a Friday night instead.
FIFA Peace Prize
First question: Should Donald Trump have been awarded a fake peace prize? Chris Hope thought so, because Trump has ended seven wars. I’d fact-check that one if I were you, Chris.
How will the budget bring economic growth to the North East?
Graham had his talking points ready. The Labour party’s manifesto was similar to Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen’s. But, Graham claimed, Ben had actually delivered on his. His achievements included Teesside Airport, the SeAH Factory, and the opening of skills academies.
Money well spent?
Well, regarding the airport, reality will bite at the next Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA) cabinet meeting on 12 December. A paper from the finance chief will note that “a bad debt provision for the total interest accrued (on airport loans) will be provided” in this year’s budget:
Better late than never
The SeAH factory still hasn’t started full production. The factory workers are currently taking industrial action. And it’s still the only Teesworks project that has broken ground, despite Houchen’s claim, in July 2023, that Teesworks would be almost full within 18 months. Skills academies? Well, this one has just closed. It was situated in Billingham. The Teesworks Skills Academy itself doesn’t teach any skills.
It’s not all bad news
While she was up north, Gillian Tett had visited Teesside University in Middlesbrough. The university is part of a group known as IntoUniversity, which encourages children without a family experience of higher education to consider applying for university places. Graham was encouraged by the creation of AI Growth Zones in the North East. He hadn’t been briefed very well on this. Teesside isn’t getting one.
Child poverty
Shami Chakrabati raised the key benefit of the budget, raising children out of poverty by abolishing the two-child limit. This was the opportunity for Graham Stuart to bring out his key Conservative Central Office talking point. Describing it as a “welfare benefits budget” Graham stated that, after the two-child cap is abolished, a working family will need to earn £71k just to match the income of a three-child jobless household.
Scroungers?
It’s been hard to avoid the £71k figure in the past week. The claim is based on a 1 December press release from the right wing think tank the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ). The opaquely funded CSJ, founded by Iain Duncan Smith and Tim Montgomerie, has a “D” rating from Who Funds You (WFY). WFY provides information on the transparency of think tanks. A “D” rating indicates “Names some funders (but only a minority, or not in a systematic way).”
Disingenuous claim
The claim is disingenuous, to say the least. According to analysis by Ben Chu on Newsnight the £71k family in the example is jobless (34% of Universal Credit claimants aren’t). One of the adults has disabilities, AND qualifies for Personal Independence Payment. The CSJ data also fails to mention that the “working” couple in this example, conveniently, doesn’t have any children. They’d be able to top up their £71k income by claiming child benefit for any children that they did have.
Kemi Badenoch
But these inconvenient facts didn’t stop Kemi Badenoch, who cited the CSJ’s “research” in her ill-conceived budget response. And it’s spread like wildfire in media such as the Daily Mail, the Telegraph and, of course, Chris Hope’s GB News.
The truth is still putting its boots on
It came as no surprise that the CSJ’s claim was also raised on another radio show this week. This was the monthly “Q and A” appearance by Ben Houchen on BBC Tees on 2 December. The Mayor was questioned by a Darlington listener about his failure to address child poverty. Middlesbrough, in the heart of the Tees Valley, has recently topped the national deprivation league table. As part of his defence, Houchen trotted out the CSJ talking point verbatim.
Benefits cap
And, while all of the benefit ghouls were running their mass disinformation campaign, they failed to mention the benefit cap. The cap is set at £22k for couples. They won’t get paid any more than this, regardless of how many children they have, so the £71k figure is a fantasy. Iain Duncan Smith, of the CSJ, should be aware of this. He was the Work and Pensions Secretary who introduced the benefit cap in 2012.
One last thing
Back to Any Questions, and the last question was “how do young people find reliable sources of information in the media age?”. Given last week’s two-child benefit “debate”, my advice would be to completely avoid legacy media.
Thanks to James Waterson for contributing to this article.
