If we wanna reorientate our, our economy to reindustrialization, do we not need to take a sort of more proactive, maybe tougher stance on some of the speculators in the City of London?

Um, I...

That is a very different topic.

I think it's important to distinguish.

I mean, you talk about the City of London.

The, [chuckles] um, the, the whole financial sector ranges from everything to, um, the people who lend you money to buy a house, um, provide mortgages, um, people who lend to small businesses.

Um, it includes pension funds, insurance companies.

I just wonder if we should be more ambitious

Is the total welfare bill really spiralling out of control?

Yes and no.

As usual, there are different ways of looking at it.

You can support different conclusions.

The way I would put it is this.

Overall welfare bill is best thought of in two parts.

The amount we spend on pensions and pensioners and those we spend on people of working age, which is basically unemployment, benefits for low-income families with children, and incapacity and disability benefits for people who can't work or for people who need extra help because they're disabled.

It's the

... seem to be relevant?

Uh, well, I think, um, again, this is very much politics rather than, uh, uh, um, than anything else.

Um, you know, there are border controls between Ceuta and Spain.

It's not part of the Schengen area.

The Italian government, which of course is a, uh, um, a, a far-right party, which is attempting to make itself somewhat more respectable, but is itself facing a challenge from a even farther right party, a genu- genuinely fascist party, um, and it's trying to make its own, make its own political point because, of course, the Italians, um, are still not able to fully control the ...

You know, and this is, of course- Onto the main topic of this interview, the sort of the real issue, Italians are still not able to fully control irregular migration to their own country from, um, med- the Mediterra- fr- across the Mediterranean.

So, uh, Meloni was trying to make a domestic political point, um, and I think that's also true of other European countries.

I would like to talk to you about what has changed when it comes to migration into the UK in the 10 years past, and how does that compare to what was promised?

Uh, is that really sustainable?

Um, yes.

Lots of other countries, indeed countries that are richer and who are- which are doing at least as well as we are economically, um, are, so yes, it is.

But that doesn't mean that it's the right thing for the long run.

And I think some of the, the points that Tom made about the Pensions Commission, and indeed I was involved in the, uh, Turner Pensions Commission that, that Tom mentioned back in the mid-2000s.

But we have to remember why that commission was set up.

It was set up precisely because, um, the government realized that the long-term future of the state pension then was unsustainable because it was going to be too low and because as Turner, the Turner Commission projected, by 2050, you'd have had about two-thirds of pensioners on means-tested benefits.

... reduce borrowing.