This week the government announced an overhaul of the UK’s asylum system with the stated aim of making Britain look a lot less attractive to those planning to make their way across the Channel on a small boat or outstay their visa if already here. A raft of proposals include ending a refugee’s effective right to stay in the country indefinitely, a quicker way of deporting those who fail in their asylum applications and a less sympathetic approach to refugee families. Denmark has been held up in recent days as an example of a country with much tougher asylum policies. So are we in the UK now part of a wider European trend of clamping down on asylum seekers? And what can we learn from the success or failure of other asylum policies across the continent.

Guests:

Dr Madeleine Sumption, Director of the Migration Observatory at Oxford University

Presenter: David Aaronovitch

The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves has been widely trailing this month’s budget and the difficult decisions she’ll have to make in just under two weeks time. This is being taken as code for tax rises and a possible break in Labour’s manifesto pledge with a rise in income tax. She’s said one of the key reasons for this is that the government's official forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility or OBR, is likely to lower its UK productivity growth forecast for the coming years. So why is UK productivity a problem and what can be done to improve it?

Guests:

Presenter: David Aaronovitch

Something is going in the southern Caribbean. The world’s largest aircraft carrier - the American USS Gerald R Ford- is on its way to the region. Small boats said to belong to Venezuelan drug smugglers are being blown up by the US military. Old US bases are being de-mothballed. And there’s media talk of Trump-induced regime change in Caracas, with Venezuela’s authoritarian, leftist president Nicolas Maduro in the crosshairs. In this week's Briefing Room, David Aaronovitch and guests ask what this military show of strength is really about and what it mean for the region?

Guests:

Will Grant, BBC Mexico, Central America and Cuba Correspondent.

Presenter: David Aaronovitch

When a disaster or serious event happens, such as the Grenfell Tower fire, the Manchester Arena terrorist attack or the Covid pandemic, you can be pretty sure that a public inquiry will follow. They’re popular with the public as a means of investigating serious state failure. And for Governments they can be a good way of kicking a difficult issue into the long grass, as usually by the time the inquiry is finished a different set of politicians will have to deal with the report.

There are currently 25 public inquiries in progress in the UK today - the most ever, with six announced so far this year. They range from one into Scottish child abuse, which is the longest current inquiry, to another into a police restraint death which has just lost its chair and the lawyers working for the inquiry, to Covid 19 - the largest currently underway. And which by the end of June this year had cost 177 million pounds. David Aaronovitch and guests discuss how these public inquiries work, what they achieve and who, if anyone, benefits from them?

Guests:

Judith Moritz: BBC Special Correspondent

Presenter: David Aaronovitch

Some of the biggest figures in finance, from the CEO of JPMorganChase to the Governor of the Bank of England, have been warning of potential shocks to the global economy.

As excitement continues to build about the transformative potential of Artificial Intelligence, the US stock market has boomed, potentially forming a fragile bubble. Meanwhile, recent bankruptcies in America have raised worries that a rapid growth in lending by private companies (so-called shadow banks) might be built on shaky ground - and have invoked memories of the subprime mortgage debacle that kicked off the Great Financial Crisis in 2007. And if that wasn’t enough, the threat that Donald Trump might reignite his tariff-driven trade war still looms over the global economy.

So how worried should we be? David Aaronovitch speaks to the top experts to find out.

Guests:

Presenter: David Aaronovitch

As Rachel Reeves approaches a tricky budget, her job has got that much harder. Some of our most fundamental economic data, statistics that policymakers are used to accepting at face value, suddenly have major question marks over their accuracy.

The UK’s top stats agency, the Office for National Statistics, finds itself under considerable pressure as falling response rates to its surveys leave politicians flying blind.

Guests:

Presenter: David Aaronovitch

There have been in celebrations in Israel and Gaza at the announcement of a ceasefire and the beginning of a longer term plan for peace and reconstruction in Gaza.

Guests:

Presenter: David Aaronovitch

Five years ago we in the UK were in the false lull between the first wave of covid and the second, between the first variant and the second, between the first peak of covid deaths and the second, higher peak. There wasn’t a vaccine and we didn’t know when we might get one. Now it’s a memory.

But another deadly pathogen might pop up in fifty years or it might be manifesting its early stages right now.

In the final part of our three-part mini-series looking at how the resilient the UK might be in dealing with potential future crises, we’re asking…..how prepared are we to deal with the next pandemic?

Guests:

Presenter: David Aaronovitch

From councils disrupted by ransomware, leaked defence data or individuals duped by deep fakes, the UK faces increasing cyber threats. David Aaronovitch asks his guests how prepared we are - whether as government defending critical infrastructure or as individuals guarding our digital identities.

Guests:

Presenter: David Aaronovitch

The UK is getting hotter. And wetter. Extreme weather events in the UK are happening more often. And that trend won’t stop any time soon. It all means more flooding and fire risk. Enter the R word - resilience - how well are we coping with what’s going on now, and how advanced is our planning for what’s coming? In the first of our three part mini series looking at how the resilient the UK might be in dealing with potential future crises we ask how prepared are we to deal with the changing climate?

Guests:

Mark Maslin, professor of Climatology at University College London

Producers: Ben Carter, Kirsteen Knight and Sally Abrahams