Robert Peston

Andy Burnham is the messiah.

He's going to solve everything.

And this has been a problem with water privatisations, why it should never have been privatised in the first place.

And with me, Robert Peston.

I mean, there's some very interesting ideas that are floating around about what a Burnham...

if that comes to pass, would mean for how you manage the economy.

So I'm going to look at one particular bit of it, which is when he talks about controlling energy, water, our most important public services, utilities.

What does he actually mean by that?

Are we talking about old-fashioned nationalisation and an enormous burden

Bill, you know, billions and billions, well, hundreds, you know, potentially well over a hundred billion of taxpayers' money being used to buy these businesses, or are we talking about something else?

So that's what I'm going to look at.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know if you remember, but...

We talked on this podcast when we saw the astonishing price shock from Putin's war in Ukraine about how other governments around the place were panicking

putting the lid on the costs of essentials.

And in particular, if you look at a country like France, there was a sort of deal with the supermarkets there to limit the prices or to cap the prices of some

Because obviously, you know, when you have these price shocks, the impact, particularly on those on lower incomes, is really severe.

And so one of the things that the government has been looking at, and just to be clear, you know, we are recording this before COVID.

the Chancellor makes her announcement about what she's doing in terms of trying to help those on lowest incomes as a result of the price shock from Trump's Iran war.

But what is going on, I've talked to supermarket bosses about this, is this idea that somehow the supermarkets would volunteer

To limit the price of a number of essentials like milk and eggs and those products that we regard as absolutely core to nutrition.