Hello and welcome to Inside Briefing, the podcast from the Institute for Government. I'm Emma Norris. The countdown is underway. Rachel Reeves is just days away from setting out her spring statement to Parliament, and she's braced for gloomy fiscal forecasts.

We've heard briefing about deeper cuts this morning too.

So what could the Chancellor do? What shouldn't the Chancellor do?

We'll be exploring her options.

We already know that the welfare budgets in her site,

with the government this week setting out a series of controversial reforms,

we'll look at whether the plan can hold.

And then we'll dig a bit deeper into last week's big decision to abolish NHS England,

a big move, a risky move.

We'll look at whether it could work.

Joining me throughout is Tom Pope, our Deputy Chief Economist and Mastermind of our Spring

Statement Response.

Hi, Tom.

Hi, Emma. IFQ program director and

eagle-eyed government watcher, Kath Haddon, is here too. Hi, Kaff. Hello, Emma. And we're joined

again by somebody with an unrivaled understanding of how NHS England works and indeed of welfare

reform, and that's IFG senior fellow Nick Timmons. Hey, Nick. Hello. But before we get into all of that, we're also joined by another special guest,

because where Kirstearner, last week's guests, blazes a trail, other Cabinet ministers

follow.

And this week, I'm delighted to be joined by Darren Jones, Chief Secretary to the Treasury,

who is dropping by the podcast studio on his way to speak at an IFG event.

Chief Secretary, thank you so much for joining us on Inside Briefing.

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