Rob Paston

and indeed the confidence to work.

So I suppose what I'm getting at is, of course, in the context of the UK, if we could get more people into work, that would be a great thing.

But it can't be any old work because one of the reasons we're in the mess we're in is because too many people are in poverty and yet are in work.

I don't think anybody disagrees that English and maths are absolutely core and everybody's got to get them.

But I think, you know, there are two points.

Well, I certainly think that.

But I think the bigger point is we haven't valued vocational skills training.

And secondly, because we are going through this artificial intelligence revolution, social, economic, and it will be governmental as well.

You know, I would argue that the current curriculum is absolutely not fit for purpose because, you know, what people ought to be concentrating on are skills to do with deploying AI and a lot of them are to do with developing skills of team working, resilience, creativity, none of that.

is part of the curriculum here.

Many other countries are already trying to adapt their curriculums in ways we're just not.

Sure.

We do talk a lot about that on the podcast.

So I just want to take you back to, though, some of the more sort of basic questions, basic questions for government.

So you made what I think many people would agree with, the point about how mental health support through the NHS has been inadequate.

And I think, truthfully, it is still grotesquely inadequate.

If you look at the OECD statistics about how we compare in terms of welfare spending to other countries, the way that they measure it is they actually lump together, you know, pensions payments, support for the unemployed and health spending, right?

And if you lump all that together,

we are in the middle of the pack.

Would that suggest to you that even though there is a very strong case that the NHS is not productive enough, that nonetheless, actually, we've just got the balance wrong, you know, when it comes to where we spend the money, that actually more money needs to go into health support if you're going to have any chance of actually reducing the money that you spend on paying people to stay at home?