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00:00 Hello and welcome to another episode of Politics Unpacked. My name is Ray Blackburn, National
00:05 World.com's politics editor, and today we'll be going through the five pledges that Rishi
00:11 Sunak made a year ago and see how he's faring on. So, on the 4th of January 2023, exactly
00:20 a year ago today, the PM announced five priorities, five promises to the British people. He said
00:27 these would be five foundations on which to build a better future for our children and
00:32 grandchildren and he asked the British public to hold him and his government to account
00:37 over these. So, 12 months on, we're going to take a look at these five pledges and see
00:42 how he's getting on. Now, in that speech last January, Sunak started by introducing the
00:49 pledges and he said he would halve inflation. So, I want to make five promises to you today,
01:00 five pledges to deliver peace of mind, five foundations on which to build a better future
01:07 for our children and grandchildren. First, we will halve inflation this year to ease
01:15 the cost of living and give people financial security. So, this is the only pledge that
01:23 Rishi Sunak has categorically met so far a year on. It's also the only pledge he put
01:30 a time frame on. He said he would halve inflation within a year and that has happened. It's
01:35 fallen from 10.7% at the time he made the promise to 3.9%. Now, when Sunak made this
01:44 pledge, the ambition of it was questioned a bit by journalists and economists as inflation
01:51 was widely predicted to fall by half over the year. And the Prime Minister was also
01:58 quizzed as to why exactly he was making a pledge around inflation when inflation isn't
02:03 really the government's prerogative. Inflation, which is part of monetary policy, lies with
02:10 the Bank of England and the Bank of England, which sets the interest rates, it is their
02:14 job to try and bring inflation down. So, Sunak was questioned why he was including this as
02:21 kind of a government policy, I guess. However, we have to give him credit where credit is
02:27 due, even if he may not have had much control or influence over it and inflation has halved.
02:34 So, we have to give him credit for that. Now, his second pledge, this was another pledge
02:39 that was also on the economy. Second, we will grow the economy, creating better paid jobs
02:48 and opportunity right across the country. So, this was another fairly unambitious pledge,
02:59 just to grow the economy in real terms. Now, that only hasn't happened in eight years since
03:05 1949. Yet, even though this, in theory, should be quite an easy thing for any government
03:12 to achieve, it's kind of the basic thing we expect from our government with their fiscal
03:16 policy. For a while, it looked like this was in doubt. Between April and June, according
03:22 to the ONS, the economy flatlined. And then from July to September, it actually shrunk.
03:28 However, the Bank of England and the Office of Budget Responsibility, they do think that
03:35 when they do all their calculations later this year, that the economy in 2023 will have
03:42 grown by 0.5%, which is pretty low. You kind of want your economy to be growing around
03:47 2% every year to have a material difference on people's lives. So, even though this pledge
03:54 is just about looking like it's on track for SUNAC, whether that pretty low growth will
04:00 actually translate into improving people's lives, making them feel better off, making
04:05 them feel more comfortable is probably unlikely. So, it's kind of a victory on paper, but nothing
04:13 more than that at the moment. And obviously, it hasn't been confirmed yet. It won't be
04:18 confirmed until later this year. Now, Richard SUNAC's third pledge, this was
04:23 also quite a technical one around the economy about debt.
04:28 ... free. Third, we will make sure our national debt is falling so that we can secure the
04:36 future of public service. So, this pledge from Richard SUNAC was that
04:45 debt will be falling. And it's quite a confusing one for me why he chose to make this as one
04:50 of his headline pledges. I guess it's a principle, the UK has a lot of debt at the moment, you
04:59 want it to fall. But it's not one that is going to make an immediate impact on people's
05:04 personal finances, which have obviously been hit a lot during the cost of living crisis.
05:09 However, beyond that, the PM is failing to meet this pledge. Over the last year, the
05:17 overall national debt has risen, and it's going to continue to rise until 2026-27. The
05:24 year after, it's forecast to drop very slightly. And this has led to Richard SUNAC saying that
05:31 debt is falling, which isn't true. And he's actually been reprimanded by the UK Statistics
05:36 Authority for saying that. So, yeah, he's definitely failing on this pledge. The national
05:42 debt is going up. However, his next pledge, he's probably doing even worse on, and that
05:49 pledge is on the NHS.
05:51 Fourth, NHS waiting lists will fall, and people will get the care they need more quickly.
06:01 So, yeah, you heard him there say that his pledge is to get NHS waiting lists to fall.
06:09 All those NHS waiting lists in England, in Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, health
06:13 is devolved. So, it doesn't include that. But in England, the overall waiting list has
06:18 risen from 7.2 million in December 2022 to more than 7.7 million now. So, an increase
06:26 of around 500,000 people. And the NHS waiting list has continued to hit record levels throughout
06:35 this year. It's one that he's quite clearly failing on. It's one that voters will be feeling
06:42 when they're trying to get an appointment, when they're waiting for routine surgery or
06:47 an appointment with a doctor. That is something that they will really be feeling.
06:52 Now, SUNAC has blamed this on the strikes, which we know are going on. There's a junior
06:56 doctor strike going on at the moment, and that will undoubtedly have an effect. However,
07:00 when he made this pledge, there was already a lot of industrial action. And yet, this
07:05 one is not looking like it's coming down any time soon. And then, SUNAC's final pledge
07:11 was on his favourite subject, which is stopping the boats.
07:16 Fifth, we will pass new laws to stop small boats, making sure that if you come to this
07:24 country illegally, you are detained and swiftly removed.
07:31 So there was Rishi Sunak saying he was going to pass legislation to stop the boats. He's
07:38 also later on in the speech and in other speeches since then, he's just referred to this pledge
07:44 as simply stopping the boats. And while the number of arrivals on small boats has come
07:50 down over the last year by around 30%, according to the government, he's still failing to stop
08:00 the boats. There's been 30,000 arrivals by small boats since he said that. And his key
08:06 legislation, which he says will act as a deterrent to people crossing the channel on small boats,
08:12 the kind of threat to send them to Rwanda for asylum processing and resettlement, that
08:19 was declared unlawful by the courts. And he's having to pass new legislation to try and
08:23 get that through, which is going through quite slowly. And we've no idea when that will actually
08:29 get passed. So on both accounts there, of passing the legislation and actually stopping
08:35 the boats, he's failing on that pledge.
08:39 Anyway, summing up, Rishi Sunak said this.
08:46 So five promises. We will halve inflation, grow the economy, reduce debt, cut waiting
08:54 lists and stop the boats. Those are the people's priorities. They are your government's priorities.
09:01 And we will either have achieved them or not. No tricks, no ambiguity. We're either delivering
09:08 for you or we're not. We will rebuild trust in politics through action or not at all.
09:18 So I ask you to judge us on the effort that we put in and the results that we achieve.
09:30 So going through the pledges there, he's achieved one, which is halving inflation. The growing
09:36 the economy pledge looks like it's just about on track, although if the last quarter of
09:43 the year the economy doesn't grow, we'll actually be in recession. So that is still a bit up
09:48 in the air. And then on the final three pledges, to reduce national debt, to reduce NHS waiting
09:54 times and to stop the boats, he's failing on.
09:58 Now, in the speech, we heard him say there, he said there's no tricks, there's no ambiguity.
10:02 We're either delivering for you or we're not. So based on this, we have to say that on three
10:07 of those, he's not delivering. He's not delivering for voters. And what has turned out since
10:14 then is there is also a bit of ambiguity around these pledges. Since he's made these pledges,
10:20 this is something that journalists have asked the government about a lot. And what Rishi
10:26 Singh's official spokesman has said is basically for four of the pledges, the last four, there
10:30 is no time limit on those. So I guess he can say basically up until the election whether
10:36 he's achieved those or not, which we asked him about it at the start of this year to
10:43 try and work out whether he thinks he's achieved the pledges. And the government is basically
10:46 saying there's no time limit and it's up for the British people to decide. Well, I'd say
10:52 at the moment, it appears like he's not delivering on those pledges.
10:57 And looking back on them, it strikes me as quite an odd political move. Politicians don't
11:03 like to set themselves firm targets. It's something we've seen with the Labour Party
11:08 recently. Keir Starmer's been accused of not making too many promises, not setting too
11:13 many targets. And he's accused of being a bit unambitious. But we can see here why Sunak,
11:19 why he isn't. Because Sunak has set these five very clear targets. And with three of
11:25 them, he's not achieving. And with the first two, which he might achieve, they're pretty
11:31 basic things you want the government to do. You want the government to grow the economy
11:35 and you want inflation to be low. And it shouldn't be a lot of fanfare for them to do that. So
11:40 this was an odd political choice at the time by Rishi Sunak. And it's one that is coming
11:46 back to bite him, really, because at least on three of them, he's very much failing to
11:50 deliver those at the moment.
11:53 I hope you like this video. My name is Raph Blackburn. I'm National World's Politics Editor.
11:59 I'm based in Westminster. You can find all of our politics stories on that part of our
12:04 website. And if you want to subscribe to our weekly politics newsletter, you can find that
12:08 on the newsletter section of our website. Thank you very much for watching, and I'll
12:12 see you next time.
12:13 [END]
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