As you can see, with me now is the Work and Pension Secretary Mel Stride, who's just rushed in to see us. Good to have you here this morning. I want to ask you about Donald Trump, first of all, because we did get the news overnight that he has become the first former or serving US President to be convicted of a crime. Should he be voted as President again in November? Is this a man you're still happy to do business with? Okay.

I think as a government cabinet minister, it's a long-held convention that we don't interfere in elections overseas. I really can't comment on that particular question in the same way we wouldn't expect American politicians to start throwing comments in about our general election and who should be supported, et cetera. I can't say that. They are clearly dramatic, a very dramatic turn of events, and let's wait to see what happens. But ultimately, the choice will be for the American people on July the fourth.

Absolutely.

I'm sorry, November. July the fourth is for us, isn't it?

That's us. Yes, theirs is November. But Putting aside the election aspect to it, what do you make of that news? I mean, it is extraordinary, isn't it?

Well, it is. I don't think it's unprecedented, actually. I think about a century ago, there was a Communist who stood for the presidency of the United States, who did so from a jail cell, I believe. It wasn't terribly successful back in that time. But yeah, I mean, these are virtually unprecedented moments and extraordinarily dramatic. But it is a matter, ultimately, for the American people in their election in November.

Okay, let's talk about politics closer to home. Mark Logan, the Bolton Northeast MP, yet another Tories MP who's decided to defect from the party to labor. It's not a good look, is it, when even your own MPs don't want to vote for you in the middle of an election campaign?

Well, it's disappointing. And Mark will have his own reasons as to why he's decided to do that. I did notice in the letter that he wrote at the time he made that announcement, that there wasn't a mention of a single policy or idea that labor had that had attracted him.

He did say, though, that the jury party was very different from the one he joined a decade ago.

The point that I'm making, Anna, is I think that what this tells you is something fundamental about the choice at this election, which is that you've got ourselves, having been in government, having now turned the economy around, got inflation right down, getting real wages growing, having the fastest growth, equal fastest in the G7 in the last quarter. We are going in the right direction. And a Labor Party, frankly, which has no ideas, has no plan, and it's going to take us right back to square one. And those are the big issues that are actually in play.

Why does your own MPs not want to stick with you if it's all going so well? Five defections in recent weeks, and just in this week, you've lost one to Labor and one to reform. Are you worried there are going to be more?

Well, as I say, I'm disappointed, and of course, we're disappointed with those things happen. But the big picture here, and there's a lot at stake here, over and above what Mark Logan may or may not decide to have done, is the future of our country. As I say, we are at an inflection point now. We're at a turning point for our country. We We've come through real trials that everybody's gone through around COVID. The economy shrank by 10% overnight. We had to protect the economy during that period, protecting millions of jobs, Richie Sunack as Chancellor, protecting them through furlough, bringing inflation down. We've done that. We've got the opportunity now to move forward. We started cutting taxes as a pension secretary. I was able to announce very recently the triple lock plus, making sure that we keep millions of pensioners out of tax, those that have the state pension and saving hundreds of pounds going forward for other state pension holders. Labor have dismissed that entirely, which means that millions of pensioners under a Labor government, this is an important point, millions of pensioners under a Labor government are going to get dragged into income tax, effectively a tax on retirement.

I'm now concerned that they're going for workplace pensions as well, which we might want to talk about.

Okay, but just on that point, it was the Conservatives who froze the tax threshold in the first place. Your proposals are merely undoing something that you introduced.

What we're doing, these are real tax cuts because you can look at where the tax system is now.

You can just undoing something that you brought in.

All taxes move around in different ways over many years. I mean, that's a simple statement of fact, but the reality is you start from where you are and you have to decide where you're going to go to, and where we're going to is lower taxes. Now, we've also done that with national insurance for 29 million working people. An average cut by slashing national insurance by a third, we're saving £900 for an average earner in this country. So the direction of travel under this party is for taxes to be coming down. Under labor, if you take pensioners, for example, they are going to be dragging millions of pensioners into paying income tax, and we don't think that's right.

Your change has only happened in 2028, don't they? Are you dragging millions of people into that income tax bracket, that higher bracket?

What is happening is what labor are saying is that they will keep the personal allowance, which is the amount you can earn by way of income without paying income tax. They will keep that where it is or just uprate it by the current metric. We are saying we will go further than that, make sure that that personal allowance goes up as from next April. So if we are re-elected, we will make sure that those pensioners are kept out of income tax. Where the 2027-8 year comes in is that is the point at which under labour's plans, millions of pensioners will start paying income tax, who are not paying income tax at the moment.

Okay. You wanted to talk about workplace pensions. What's your concern there?

Well, the concern is that labor have a 38.5 billion pound unfunded spending commitment. Now, that is something-They dispute those-They do, but this is an official treasury analysis. It's robust. We They've taken a very conservative view of firm commitments that they have made and we expect to see in their manifesto, and they have been looked at as part of an official analysis, treasury analysis. Now, that amount of money, given that labor have ruled out increasing increasing national insurance income tax, and because of the pressure we put on quite recently through our press department, they've now finally ruled out VAT increases, and they've ruled out increased corporation tax. They are the four biggest tax revenue raisers in the UK. The question becomes, where are they going to find this 38.5 billion? Where Gordon Brown found that money and where Rachel reads in her paper, which I believe is probably still on her website now, I would find it would be to raid workplace pensions.

Well, hang on. This paper you're talking about is from 2018. Is that right? That's before the last election.

This isn't labor policy, is it? It's in the run-up to the election. It wasn't lately. The last election. Anna, the raid on pensions That's what the plan was that Gordon Brown carried out cost the UK pension sector £118 billion. We ended up with a... Now, that wasn't in their manifesto. That's the point.

This is a pamphlet that predates the last election, and it's not current labor policy, is it?

Gordon Brown is referred to by Rachel Reeve's as his mentor. What Gordon Brown did was he went into that election not being straight about what his plans were around pensions. He had a large amount of money he knew he had to raise. We know Labor have that as well. We have a pamphlet on Rachel Reece's website making it very clear that this is a way of raising £20 billion. It's now 20 years old. It's promoted on the website in that paper. As I say, when Gordon Brown went into that election, he kept it very quiet as to what he was going to do. We ended up with a fourth highest level of pension of poverty in Europe as a consequence of what happened then, and I don't want that to happen now. If you're thinking there's going to be a Labor government coming up, the message should be, Start saving now because you're going to pay for it.

Okay, muststride. Thanks very much indeed. Thank you very much.