News in Picture

On this Armistice Day we will end tonight's programme with a discussion about the lasting resonance of the Great War poets and the Poet Laureate's poem written for today. Is poetry the most apt medium for conveying loss, bravery, anger and regret? We hope to be joined by the poets Simon Armitage and Andrew Motion.

We will begin though with the state of the UK economy. "Gloomy optimism" would probably best describe the assessment given this morning by the Bank of England. The Governor of the Bank, Mervyn King, said that the recovery had "only just started" and was "highly uncertain." The unemployment rise was the smallest quarterly increase in 18 months, but the youth unemployment rate has reached a record high of nearly 20 per cent. With such a fragile recovery under way, some economists fear that planned spending cuts could lead to another dip.

Tonight we speak to David Blanchflower who - virtually alone in the Bank of England - predicted the nature and scale of the recession months in advance of the markets. And we'll also be joined by DeAnne Julius, a senior economist who is on the board of a number of blue chip companies, and Lord Lamont, who was chancellor during the last recession.

Also tonight, a revolt on childcare vouchers. The government has rejected a warning by no less than nine former Labour ministers (including Patricia Hewitt and Caroline Flint) that phasing out childcare vouchers could harm the party at the general election. The prime minister says this relief is badly targeted but Flint says, "surely this is not the time to remove a key support from hard working families... crucially in the run up to an election, it will remove support for working parents and for businesses in key marginal constituencies".

We have one of the signatories to the letter, and are pursuing government ministers, who at this early stage are proving elusive.

And in the last in our series of film on the noughties - Susan Watts explores the giant leaps that were made in science and especially genetics over the last ten years. One of her interviews even raises the spectre of a "superhuman" in the near future. Read more about that here.

Join us tonight at 10.30pm on BBC Two.

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