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1:00

more than 40 gigabytes per month. Mint Unlimited slows. Ladies

1:07

and gentlemen, David Cameron. Thank

1:11

you. Thank you. 14

1:16

years ago, in the empty shell of a

1:19

derelict Battersea Power Station in London, a

1:21

young David Cameron walks onto a stage with

1:24

his baby face and rosy red cheeks. He

1:27

stands in front of a huge sign that

1:29

says, we're all in this together and

1:31

clutches the 2010 election manifesto that he's

1:33

there to launch. It's

1:35

a little hardback book in deepest Tory

1:37

blue, embossed with the words,

1:40

an invitation to join the government of

1:42

Britain. He sets

1:44

out how he sees the country before him, and

1:47

it begins to make sense why he's chosen the

1:49

backdrop of this decaying monolith of a building. The

1:52

word that jumps out, the same

1:54

word he's been using in speech after speech

1:56

for a few years now, is broken. We

1:59

can mend. of

8:00

recent British political history is the

8:02

difference between David Cameron as leader

8:05

of the opposition and David Cameron

8:07

as Prime Minister because the

8:09

pitch when he was leader of the opposition

8:11

was a kinder, gentler

8:14

conservatism, compassionate conservatism.

8:16

What then happened almost straight away was

8:20

instead austerity and a

8:22

program of shredding

8:24

the state and the social fabric

8:27

all in the name of

8:29

cutting the deficit and their claim

8:31

was that in arriving in office

8:34

in 2010 they'd looked

8:36

under the bonnet and seen that the

8:38

engine was in pieces and

8:41

they purported to be shocked by

8:43

what they had discovered and

8:45

they were helped in a way by

8:47

one particular joke that

8:50

just very badly backfired. The

8:52

outgoing Labour Chief Secretary to

8:54

the Treasury, Liam

8:56

Byrne, who will never live this down, had

8:59

left a handwritten note for his

9:01

successor saying, sorry there is no

9:03

money left. Dear Chief Secretary, I'm

9:05

sorry to have to tell you

9:08

the money's run out and

9:10

it was honest. I mean I think most of us knew

9:12

that from the... Is that true then? Are you saying the

9:14

money has completely run out? Well we clearly have a massive

9:16

deficit so it's more than run out. And

9:19

that enabled, as they saw it,

9:21

to justify everything that then followed.

9:23

Now we're gonna have to curb

9:25

this mad spending binge that the

9:28

previous lot were on. The

9:30

note left by Liam Byrne was an

9:33

absolute gift to the coalition government, this

9:35

sense that Labour had spent all of

9:37

the money. But we shouldn't forget,

9:39

should we, that there had actually been the financial crash

9:41

in 2007-2008 and the economy

9:44

had taken a huge hit. So

9:46

it wasn't actually just about Labour

9:48

overspending was it? It wasn't

9:51

about overspending at all in my view. I

9:53

mean the point about the international

9:55

crisis, a global financial

9:58

crisis, 2008

10:00

was it had affected everybody. It

10:03

was the worst day on Wall Street since

10:05

the crash of 1987. From

10:08

the financial capital of the world, the

10:11

opening bell is going to ring in

10:14

five seconds. And to be honest with

10:16

you, we wish it wouldn't. The

10:19

Dow tumbled more than 500 points after

10:21

two pillars of the street tumbled over

10:23

the weekend. Lehman Brothers, a 158-year-old firm,

10:25

filed for bankruptcy. I

10:29

remember Labour saying this was

10:32

a crisis made on Wall Street,

10:34

not in Downing Street. We must

10:36

now take action on the global financial

10:38

recession, which is likely to cause recession

10:40

in America, France, Italy, Germany, Japan. There's

10:43

a global consensus among economists that

10:46

actually Gordon Brown and the Labour government

10:49

that was in place then was almost

10:51

exemplary in handling this financial crash. You

10:53

read the memoirs of people in the

10:56

Bush administration who admit they turned to

10:58

London and to Gordon Brown for

11:00

advice on how to deal with the banking

11:03

crisis and that there was

11:05

one crucial weekend where there was a

11:07

risk that there was going to be a global run

11:09

on the banks where people would have gone to cash points

11:11

on the Monday morning and no money would have come out. And

11:14

the person who came up with a plan to

11:16

prevent that happening that was then adopted in Washington

11:18

and all around the world was Gordon Brown. This

11:21

is a decisive moment for the world economy.

11:24

The decisions that we make now will affect

11:26

our world for a decade or more to

11:28

come. And sure, Labour

11:31

spent a lot of money, but everybody around

11:33

the world had to spend money in

11:35

order to prevent a crash turning

11:38

into a structural depression. When

11:41

things are tough, governments must spend

11:43

money to keep the economy afloat.

11:45

It's only when it's doing well that you then

11:47

need to pull back. And that

11:50

was why there was a consensus really

11:52

among economists that at this moment of

11:54

crisis was exactly the moment when you must

11:56

not turn the taps off. You've got

11:58

to keep them going to... keep everything

12:00

going. And yet George

12:02

Osborne, as Chancellor of the

12:04

Conservative-led Coalition, decided to ignore

12:07

the consensus and pursue austerity.

12:09

And the word austerity, it

12:11

feels so familiar now, but

12:13

it's easy to forget sometime the extent of the

12:15

cuts that began in 2010 and were such a

12:19

central feature of George Osborne's budgets for the

12:21

following years. Can you sort of itemise that

12:23

for us? Give us a sense of the

12:25

breadth and the depth of those cuts. It

12:28

really did affect every corner

12:30

of the public realm. The

12:33

first feel of the acts was on

12:36

councils, on local government. You know,

12:38

normally they are in receipt of

12:40

a chunk of money

12:43

from central government and suddenly

12:45

that was massively cut. You

12:47

know, there is one measure that says in

12:50

between 2010 and all the way to

12:52

2020, councils lost almost 60p

12:54

in every pound that

12:56

they got from the central government. That had

12:58

an effect on all the services they run,

13:01

whether that's buses or

13:03

housing, services for

13:05

young people, youth

13:07

clubs and after school

13:09

provision, arts organisations, you

13:12

know, local theatres in public toilets,

13:14

in the libraries that suddenly either

13:17

had to close altogether or sharply restricted hours,

13:19

swimming pools that were drained of water. And

13:21

by the way, you can see them all

13:24

over the country now. There are still playgrounds

13:27

that are behind rusted fences

13:29

and where the swings don't

13:31

move anymore because they

13:33

were deprived of money. It was quite

13:35

a sort of deliberate tactic

13:37

by the Conservative government because they

13:39

knew that voters would blame the

13:42

local council who would put a sign

13:44

on the playground saying, sorry, closed without

13:47

realising the reason why the council can't fund

13:49

the library or the playground or the swimming

13:51

pool is because the money that central government

13:54

allocate to them had been cut off. against

14:00

local authority cuts. Now

14:02

a leading think tank has declared the whole

14:04

council funding system in England doesn't work. Just

14:07

every area of our national life

14:09

was suddenly stretched. Social

14:12

care, which is funded by local authorities,

14:14

which often sucked up all their

14:16

budget. It was often the very last thing they could

14:18

cut because those are the people who are so vulnerable.

14:20

They can be adults, they can be children. You know,

14:22

if a local authority doesn't have the budget to do

14:24

that, they really have the

14:26

budget to do nothing. It's

14:29

not just the cuts, it's

14:31

how disabled people are being treated within

14:34

that. I know

14:36

that if just a few things were

14:38

different, like being somewhere

14:40

accessible, the care being fully

14:42

in place, I know my

14:44

life could be really different. And

14:47

then you think about the NHS, the rhetoric was

14:49

that it was the budget being protected, but

14:52

it didn't increase in real terms over that

14:54

decade, starting in 2010, when the pressures certainly

14:57

did increase because you had this ageing

14:59

population. Sunday

15:02

night, a peak time

15:04

in this alien. 95 patients

15:07

and just 33 cubicles and

15:09

rooms. We actually have corridor

15:11

nurses now as well. Times

15:13

are very desperate. What's it like here, Miss

15:15

Fizzy? Dangerous. Yeah,

15:18

it's frightening. I

15:20

need beds and stuff. It's just

15:22

like banging your head against a brick wall. Police

15:27

budgets cut by around a fifth, it

15:29

meant there were more than 20,000 officers, police

15:32

officers who were lost, people who would have

15:35

been on the beat, would have been on

15:37

the street corner who weren't there. And so

15:39

people talking about some crimes like burglary, in

15:41

effect, being decriminalised. Tonight

15:43

we investigate if our towns and

15:45

cities are safe as cuts to

15:47

the police deepen. We're on the

15:49

front line as police warn crime

15:51

is going undetected. A

15:53

big knock on effect of the police was

15:55

in the courts. We had Ministry of Justice

15:58

budget cut by 40... suddenly

16:00

half of all magistrates' courts were

16:03

shut. The latest figures from the Ministry

16:05

of Justice show the backlog of cases is

16:07

at a record high, with more than 66,000

16:09

cases in England and Wales incomplete

16:12

last year. The armed forces

16:14

massively reduced to the point where you

16:16

have warnings from former generals saying, Britain

16:19

couldn't fight a war now, even if it

16:21

needed to. Britain

16:24

is keen to support Ukraine in

16:26

its war with Russia, but underfunded

16:29

and facing further cuts, the

16:31

British army is in need of help too.

16:36

So, you know, you can go on and on, but

16:38

it was the entire fabric of the country,

16:40

every part of it, had a

16:42

tear in it that turned sometimes into

16:44

just a gaping hole through

16:47

this very deliberate policy of starving

16:49

those areas of funds. When

16:52

we say we're all in this together, it is

16:54

not a cry for help, it is a call

16:56

to arms. I know the

16:58

British people, they are not passengers, they're

17:00

drivers. I've seen the courage of our

17:02

soldiers, the patience of our

17:04

teachers, the dedication of our doctors, the

17:07

compassion of our care workers, the wisdom

17:09

of our elderly. So come on, let's

17:11

work together in the national interest. APPLAUSE

17:16

And David Cameron famously declared that we're

17:18

all in this together. How

17:20

true was that? Well, it really wasn't

17:22

true, and it was the rhetoric. They would say

17:25

it again and again. It

17:27

felt like it was one of those lines that

17:29

had been very sort of focus-grouped. I remember George

17:31

Osborne saying it in a hall, a Tory party

17:33

conference. And it

17:35

wasn't right. The disabled were often

17:37

hit really hard because they were

17:39

often using so many of the

17:41

services that were cut. The

17:44

acts fell very heavily on women, services

17:47

that women use, or

17:49

the burden of care shifting, as it so often

17:51

does, to women, looking after elderly parents,

17:53

say, without care provision.

17:56

And analysis that would come

17:58

later would show that... actually the richest

18:01

20% were spared

18:04

the effects of austerity. And

18:06

Tory councils, often in

18:08

the leafier, more affluent parts of the country,

18:11

found their budgets were not nearly so

18:13

severely cut. Something Rishi

18:15

Sunak, in a perfectly leafy setting,

18:18

speaking during that summer election campaign

18:20

against Liz Truss, that leadership campaign,

18:22

at a Tory garden party, I mean, the setting

18:25

was perfect. He said, we,

18:27

the Tories, worked very hard

18:29

to make sure that the

18:32

squeeze was felt on those Labour voting

18:34

urban areas rather than on Tory areas

18:36

like this one. He admitted it. I

18:39

managed to start changing the funding formulas to

18:41

make sure that areas like this are getting

18:43

the funding that they deserve, because we inherited

18:45

a bunch of formulas from the Labour Party

18:48

that shoved all the funding into deprived urban

18:50

areas. That needed to be undone. I started

18:52

the work of undoing that. So this was

18:54

a policy that affected the poorest, those

18:57

who were disabled, it affected women, and

18:59

it did affect everyone apart

19:01

from those who had most. And so

19:03

there was some logic to we're all

19:06

in this together, but not the

19:08

logic George Osborne and David Cameron meant. But

19:12

for me, the defining

19:14

symbol of the last

19:16

14 years is the

19:18

food bank. When

19:24

David Cameron came to power in 2010, food

19:27

banks existed only on the very

19:29

margins of society, something for dire

19:31

emergencies. There were just 35 of them. Today

19:35

there are almost 3,000. We

19:39

now live in a country with more

19:41

food banks than cinemas or hospitals or

19:43

public libraries. There are now

19:45

more food banks than there are branches of McDonald's

19:47

in the UK. The

19:50

biggest in the country is the West End Food

19:52

Bank in Newcastle. Today

19:55

in focus first visited back in 2018. It

19:58

was one of our first ever episodes. And

20:00

we met a woman then who couldn't afford to turn on

20:02

the lights. If

20:04

your electric goes off, basically, you've got

20:07

nothing to put on it. It's

20:09

either hunting for candles, which is dangerous.

20:12

So what electricity I've got on, I try

20:14

to save it as quick as

20:16

possible so you can walk around the house without taking

20:18

yourself. We were following

20:21

Philip Olston, the UN's special rapporteur on

20:23

extreme poverty, as he toured the UK.

20:26

He'd been to some of the poorest places on earth, but

20:29

he was shocked by what he saw in

20:31

the world's fifth largest economy. In

20:34

his final report, he accused the

20:36

UK government of the systematic immiseration

20:38

of millions of people. The

20:41

motivation is very clearly, I

20:43

believe, driven by the

20:46

desire to get across a

20:49

simple set of messages. That

20:51

people who need benefits should

20:54

be reminded constantly that

20:56

they are lucky to get anything,

20:59

that nothing will be made easy. The

21:02

state does not have your back

21:04

any longer. You are

21:06

on your own. It

21:11

was clear in Newcastle in 2018 that

21:14

the biggest aspect of austerity that was driving

21:16

people to the West End Food Bank

21:18

was welfare reform. The Conservatives

21:20

had completely shredded the UK safety net.

21:23

They brought in the bedroom tax, which

21:25

effectively charged social housing tenants extra for

21:28

their spare bedrooms. And then

21:30

came the benefit cap, the two-child limit

21:32

on child benefit, and a

21:34

massive expansion of work capability assessments,

21:37

getting disabled people to prove in harsh

21:39

tests that they really were unfit to

21:42

work. And

21:44

what I found quite disgusting is

21:47

that they said, you've

21:49

had your condition for a long time,

21:51

you should be used to it by

21:54

now. And that actually

21:56

will report the road path. And

21:59

I'll speak to you. because I'm right-handed as well,

22:02

they said, well, you've got a left hand

22:04

to use that. The

22:06

government also decided to simplify

22:08

the benefits system with Universal

22:10

Credit, rolling six different

22:13

benefits into one monthly payment. Newcastle

22:15

was one of the first places where it was

22:17

widely introduced. Universal

22:20

Credit was specifically designed so that the

22:22

new claimants had to wait five weeks

22:24

for their first payment. Its

22:27

architect, the work and pension secretary, Ian

22:29

Duncan Smith, said this was

22:31

to mirror the world of work, where

22:33

employees are paid a month in arrears. A

22:37

woman called Tracy described what this actually meant

22:39

in reality. How she fell

22:41

into rent arrears and then debt was

22:43

evicted from her home and couldn't afford to

22:45

even pay her son's bus fare to send

22:47

him to school. I don't

22:50

think anyone deserved the position

22:52

we're put in because I wasn't

22:56

in work at that time. It's

22:58

my worst time in my whole life. And

23:01

I'm quite a happy person, but no. Johnny,

23:14

we've discussed how the Conservatives went

23:16

about reforming the welfare state, ostensibly

23:19

to save money, but it always

23:21

felt to me that there was more to it than that. I

23:25

think that's right. I think there was politics in it,

23:27

and I think there was philosophy in it. I

23:30

think they realised that you could hit

23:32

those people who are on benefits because

23:34

so often they didn't vote, or

23:37

they certainly didn't vote for you, the

23:39

Conservatives. And so you weren't going to

23:41

lose any votes, and perhaps you were

23:43

going to gain votes among people who

23:45

are not on benefits, who resented the

23:47

fact that their taxes were going to

23:49

pay for somebody who could work, but

23:51

would prefer to sit around watching daytime

23:53

TV. That was the stereotype. There

23:55

were people around who were ripping off

23:57

the system, who were not pulling their...