Meg Hillier

I took a difficult decision about developing closer ties with Europe.

So is this budget going to face up to difficult decisions or pretend they don't exist? I brought together two senior MPs, former Conservative Treasury minister Dame Harriett Baldwin, and the Chair of the Treasury Select Committee, Labour's Dame Meg Hillier.

I started by asking Meg whether she expected it to be a consequential budget or a steady as you go one.

I'm hopeful that it will be more of a steady as you go budget, and what we heard this week in the Treasury Select Committee is that there's quite a lot of relaxed feeling out there in the bond markets and from economists about keeping the headroom, which is the amount of money spare, if you like.

That we heard this week in the Treasury Committee that despite the challenges internationally which are causing real problems, that the UK's not performing badly.

It's performing better than a lot of our, our neighboring countries.

Now, that pat on the back from the International Monetary Fund this week, Meg Hillier, was predicated on quite tight spending plans.

Is that really where John Healey and Andy Burnham are heading? It was-- The start of Burnham's premiership in particular felt like a lot of giveaways.

But I sense a real sea change in attitude amongst the majority of the parliamentary Labour Party.

In fact, some of the biggest, um, sort of leaders of that rebellion, for example, Meg Hillier, who's not a terribly rebellious person.

Mm.

She's gone on the record saying following the Milburn Review she is now, she will not oppose welfare reform.

Yeah

... of Meg Hillier and said that actually he wasn't gonna reopen that conversation.

Well, we should have believed him the first time round.

Mm.

Of course.

And Dame Meg Hillier, the chairwoman of the Treasury Committee, has demanded that HMRC get full access to the unredacted Premier League investigation into these very same finances.

But investigating this uncovers a massive diplomatic headache.

Right.

And at least one senior politician is also questioning the decision, so much so that she's come into the studio here tonight to talk to us.

Very good evening to Dame Meg Hillier, the longstanding Labour and Co-operative MP.

for Hackney South and Shoreditch in London and chair, of course, of the Treasury Select Committee.

Well, thanks for coming in.

And you, I think, should have flyers on your seats, which has some of the key messages coming out of that.

We have Dame Meg Hillier, MP, who's the chair of the Treasury Select Committee and was a key player in the Parliamentary Labour Party's discussions about reform last year.

We have Dr Kate Summers, who's the British Academy postdoctoral fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science, whose research has focused on claimants' experience of the welfare system.

And she's also spent time seconded into DWP and advising them on research.

An excellent way to kick things off.

Meg, I'll come to you next.

What would you like to see in this government's approach to tackling health related inactivity? And maybe what is it that would make you and other Labour MPs more likely to support reforms?

Well, first of all, I should say very clearly, we need to tackle health related inactivity.