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What鈥檚 blocking us from solving the tax conundrum? Is it risk averse Chancellors who don鈥檛 understand how their cynical wheezes and compromises end up messing up the system and holding back growth? Does the fault lie with backbench MPs - like the anti-fuel duty campaigner Robert Halfon, once dubbed the most expensive MP in Britain - who block sensible reform? Does the fault lie with the media, who trumpet the cases of losers from tax reform but ignore the much larger number of winners? Or does it, in the end, come down to all of us - the public? Do we simply not want our illusions to be challenged - and will vote out of power any politician who attempts it? Do we, in the end, get the tax system we deserve?

In the third and final episode of this Radio 4 series Ben Chu gets deep into the political economy of taxation in Britain, speaking to former Chancellor Philip Hammond and the former top civil servant at the Treasury, Nick Macpherson about the political reality of tax decision-making behind the door of 11 Downing Street. Ben also joins a focus group run by More in Common to try to get a sense of how ordinary people really feel about tax and its trade offs and to ask whether - as the former Bank of England Governor Mervyn King argues - voters would respect leaders who genuinely levelled with them on tax. He also speaks to one politician - in Wales - who says he鈥檚 determined to try something new on tax and who thinks he has the courage and arguments to pull it off.

Presenter: Ben Chu
Producer: Caroline Bayley
Production co-ordinator: Janet Staples
Sound engineer: Rod Farquahar
Editor: Richard Vadon

Penn & Teller: Fool Us - Knife - Season 2 Episode 4 (2015)