 Joining me on the line to talk a little bit about the spring statement again is Dr. Fran Boyd. She is Executive Director of Positive Money. Welcome to the show, Doctor. Hi, thanks for having me on. You're welcome. Pleasure to have you on. Now, could you talk us through the main points of Mr. Hammond's spring statement? Also, more accurately, is there anything that is going to be affecting us as a consumer, as a citizen? Is there anything that we are going to see that might actively change the way we live our lives? Sure. I'm happy to do my best on that. I think fundamentally, it was a pretty disappointing and dishonest statement. And I think that Hammond was quite pleased for it to get buried in all the Brexit coverage that was happening. I think one of the most telling kind of steps that come out after some analysis by the Resolution Foundation is that with the policies that are going to be enacted in April, we're going to find the bottom fifth household's worth off by £100 and the top fifth better off by £280. So despite the fact that the Chancellor was again saying we are planning to end austerity, seeing the material outcome of the policies he's presenting to be actually increasing inequality. And I think the fact that the reason I said it's dishonest is that we're still enacting benefit cuts that were made by George Osborne in 2015. And actually almost half those cuts that were made back then haven't actually been implemented yet. So we haven't even seen the worst. They still get to come, which isn't good for the state of the country when we have very high, insecure work. You might have heard the Chancellor boasting about his employment figures. Well, two thirds of all jobs created in the last 10 years are in zero-hour contracts, no security work where people don't know if they've got work from week to week. So they don't know if they're going to have enough to cover their rent. A few other things that we kind of heard about were housing. So what we're seeing with the Chancellor and with this government is them kind of understanding some of the crisis we're facing in this country. There was a bit on housing, there was even a bit on climate change, but nowhere near enough to actually start making an impact on the kind of systemic crisis we have. So there was three billion put towards ensuring affordable housing. But actually, what we're seeing is a total housing crisis. So it's not going to be enough. What we need to see is regulation on kind of having housing as a kind of driver of the economy, property bubble, we've seen since from the South East. As I said, wasn't enough on climate change either. And one thing positive money's been campaigning on recently is RBS. So we still own 63% as the taxpayer. We'd like to see that the government actually put RBS to good use to serve the domestic economy to lend small businesses. There was an opportunity with this budget to do so, but the Chancellor didn't. And they're still going ahead with the RBS fire sale. The OBR predicts that will be 31 billion lost to the public. So we do think it was a disappointing budget. So let's get for people who are maybe not as fiscally informed as you are. This is when we bailed out RBS back in 2008. So taxpayers money was used to bail that money. And now they're thinking of selling back RBS to a loss. Exactly. A bit like they did with the post office. Yeah, exactly. It is part of this government which is keen to do, to kind of sell all the assets off, you know, with RBS back to the city of London, back to this sector or economy, which isn't serving the rest of the country and the rest of the economy. We have SMEs that can't get bank loans. We have bank branches closing down in parts of the country that really do need those banking services. We own the majority of RBS. That's a chance for us to put it to some use to say, actually, we do want banking that serves this country, it serves not businesses, it serves you know, areas that aren't just the city of London. But you know, the RBS is absolutely set on selling it back at a massive loss. Doctor, we've only got a minute and a half left or so. But I wanted to ask you how much of this statement will go right out the window depending on what actually happens with Brexit? So I think, you know, that was also keen why Philip Hamill was keen to keep it on low profile. What you tend to have with the spring statement is estimates of how the economy is doing, which will obviously change as and when Brexit happens, if it happens. However, you know, some of these policies they're committing to are, you know, they kind of say they're going to do regardless. So I think that most of the policies will happen. But what you've got to remember is that obviously Brexit is another big influence on the economy. So you know, as an ordinary citizen, your kind of income, your housing cost, your cost at the supermarket is going to be affected by all a mix of these things put together. And, you know, I just don't think we have a government that is really, as I said, it's kind of pointing to the fact that gets some of the problems in the country, but not really doing anything about it. And I think, you know, that was really telling with this spring statement, which they're quite happy to get buried. And not really have that attention to the Brexit news. Doctor, thank you so much. I'm afraid we've got used up all the time we had. That's Dr Fran Boit. She's an executive director at Positive Money, and you can find him at positivemoney.org.