Chapter 1: What measures did Chancellor Rachel Reeves announce for summer family activities?
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Chapter 2: How does the VAT cut impact costs for family attractions?
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of the Great British Summer Savings Scheme?
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Hello, it's Adam in the Newscast Studio.
And it is Chris in the Newscast Studio.
And it's Joe Pike, also in the Newscast Studio. And we're joined by Helen Miller, Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Hello.
Hello.
And it's your favourite day of the year, Helen, when there's a political debate about capital gains tax.
I live for these days.
Which you love talking about.
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Chapter 4: How do critics view the effectiveness of the VAT cut on family outings?
But before we get into tax, actually, no, there is a tax element to the first thing we're going to talk about. Rachel Reeves is doing a jet too and taking money off people's summer holidays.
Yeah.
If they're in the UK and they're with their kids and they're going out for the day.
Yes, and in her announcement today, she managed, and her team were quite surprised about this on the upside, they managed to keep a kind of rabbit in the hat to actually announce this whole thing about this cut in V8, this brief tax reduction on fun. I think you can probably sort of badge it as, can't you, or family fun.
that is going to kick in as Scotland schools break up for the summer at the tail end of June, I think June the 25th, and will run until England, Wales and Northern Ireland schools return for the autumn term at the beginning of September. VAT cut from, what, 20% to 5% on things like, what, zoos and museums and... Soft play. Soft play.
Not a place I've ever been.
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Chapter 5: What does the recent UK migration data reveal?
Oh, yeah, our kids absolutely loved it.
How much does a soft play cost?
I don't know, six, seven quid?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But given how appealing they are to kids of a certain age, that can add up. And they can get a bit feral as well, but that's probably a side... This isn't parenting health.
I once went to a soft play in the company of a friend with his daughter before I had kids and was on all fours, on like level four of this quite complicated soft play, when I encountered a former colleague of ours on also on all fours coming the other way.
Well, anyway, while you picture that, here's Richard Reeves, the Chancellor, announcing this today and not being shouted at by a van driver for once this week.
I recognise that what matters for families is not just getting by, but being able to enjoy time together without worrying about the next bill. That is why I am launching the Great British Summer Savings Scheme to help families and support our hospitality sector.
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Chapter 6: How are political parties responding to the latest migration statistics?
So I can today announce a temporary cut in the rate of VAT on summer attractions from 20% to 5% over the summer holidays.
Now, at first you think, OK, government announces they're making theme parks cheaper for families. And you think, oh, that's a bit unusual. But then you think, actually, this is of a piece of quite a few other things the government's been doing this year for the cost of living. For example, freezing some railfares.
So trying to come up with a very retail way of helping you feel like the government's on your side, but not necessarily in a way that costs the government and taxpayers loads and shed loads of money.
Yeah, and I was thinking with the... Because with some of this, there was a bit of a riff from some of the critics, some critics prior to her standing up at lunchtime today, saying, you know, to what extent will this add up to something that people can feel and notice? And then the stuff on the VAT on attractions, you think of things like theme parks, which if you go with...
a few kids in tow, quite expensive, actually.
And also the theme parks themselves for years have been calling for VAT to be cut on attractions.
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Chapter 7: What are the implications of the proposed capital gains tax changes?
So it's obviously quite a big deal for them and they think it's a bit of a barrier to people coming and spending money at their attractions. I mean, Helen, what's the economist's view of this?
I mean, I think we shouldn't forget that it is still pretty small beer, right? So on the VAT cut and the free bus travel, the government think it will cost around 300 million. That's the equivalent of about 10 pounds per household. Now, obviously, it can be skewed towards households with kids, maybe a bit more for them, but it's not a huge saving.
And of course, it depends on the extent to which businesses do pass it on to consumers. I suspect some will, not least because it comes with this big packaging and people will be expecting to see the savings. But if you're running an attraction where you've already got more people who want to come than you can accommodate, you haven't got a great incentive to be cutting prices.
And of course, some places already run discount schemes for families and kids in summer.
Chapter 8: How might upcoming economic policies affect the cost of living?
So it's not clear how much additionality this will bring. So the big picture, it is pretty small. It's clearly kind of a retail offer. It's not going to solve the cost of living crisis. But I don't think we should expect government to be shoving money at families in order to fix the cost of living crisis. Why not? Why not? Well, because I actually wish we could relabel it.
I don't think it's so much a cost of living crisis as a low income growth crisis. The fundamental problem we've got is that prices have been high in the past. It's not really that prices are high, it's that incomes are low relative to those prices. What's going to make us really feel better in a few years time is if income growth was going to be picking up. You can't just shove money.
You can't just borrow money from the markets or raise taxes, shove it at some people and fix that problem. You've got to do all the things that governments need to do to get economic growth going, basically. So on the one hand, I don't think we should expect this to be a huge deal. Obviously, for some families, it will help. It sort of reminded me of...
You know, when like supermarkets do these discounting posters and, you know, some great golf. Well, yeah. Yeah. Some cut price strawberries and some Jersey Royals and some free, you know, extra toilet roll. It's a bit like every little helps kind of feel to it, I think. But that shouldn't be that shouldn't be read as me saying.
And therefore, the government should have done something huge because I don't think that was necessarily the right the right.
Because that's the other thing, isn't it? With all of this, I was sort of pondering with this around this sort of suggestion of, you know, what can or should happen.
governments do in an era where we've perhaps in the last decade become accustomed to these colossal interventions associated with once in a whatever shocks, whether it was the pandemic or the full scale of evasion of Ukraine with furlough and then those big energy interventions and then where that leaves the public finances.
and therefore how governments approach their decisions in the years after. But then also what we collectively as a society then regard as quote-unquote normal as far as interventions are concerned.
And then to that point about what should we reasonably expect from governments or what can they best do to try and address these longer-term issues around incomes and the cost of living and how affordable things feel to people.
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