Evening summary
Here’s a roundup of the key developments from the day:
-
Since the introduction of the two-child policy – which limits benefits payments to the first two children born to the poorest households –exactly five years ago today, the fertility rate for third and subsequent children born to poorer families has barely fallen. Instead, the main impact of the policy has been to become the biggest single driver of child poverty.
- The financial pressures on many UK households and businesses have intensified today, as national insurance rates are lifted to raise funds for the NHS and social care. Despite the cost of living crisis, the government has pressed on with its manifesto-busting 1.25 percentage point rise in national insurance, announced last September.
- The increase in national insurance payments for millions of people already struggling to deal with the cost of living crisis is both right and fair, the health secretary has said. Sajid Javid said the levy of an extra 1.25 percentage points, due from Wednesday, was needed to pay for health and social care as a result of the Covid pandemic.
- Keir Starmer says the national insurance rise is “the wrong tax at the wrong time”. The Labour leader said: People are really, really struggling to pay their bills. And this is just going to impact on them very, very hard.
- Increasing national insurance for millions of workers is unfair and comes at the wrong time as the nation faces a cost-of-living crisis, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has said. He told BBC Breakfast that “the NHS and the care system does need money but it needs to be done in a fair way”.
- Boris Johnson said he had “absolutely no problem” with hiking national insurance to help fund the NHS. He did, however, acknowledge households would face choices to help make ends meet.
- Rishi Sunak’s popularity with voters has plunged amid continuing debate over the government’s reaction to surging living costs, according to a poll. His net favourability was down 24 points since just before his spring statement on 23 March, to reach minus 29, the survey by YouGov found.
- Hospitals and ambulance services across England are under “enormous strain” fuelled by “heavy demand”, “severe” staff shortages and soaring Covid cases, health leaders have warned after NHS trusts covering millions of patients declared critical incidents. Dr Layla McCay, director of policy at the NHS Confederation, which represents the whole healthcare system, said the situation had become so serious that “all parts” of the health service were now becoming “weighed down”.
- The Scottish Conservatives today diverged from the Westminster party as they committed to voting for a ban on conversion practices – including a ban on trans conversion therapy – in forthcoming Holyrood legislation.
- Divisions in the Conservative party over the privatisation of Channel 4 are bursting into the open, with the plans likely to face a bumpy ride in parliament. After the government made the announcement, it became clear that privatisation plans were not sitting well, not only with media personalities but also with senior figures in the Conservative party.
- Sewage has become a major battleground in the local elections in so-called “blue wall” seats, where the Liberal Democrats are challenging the Conservatives, from Guildford to Cambridgeshire. The Lib Dems have put eliminating sewage dumps at the heart of their campaign, with the party leader, Ed Davey, launching their fight today in Wimbledon.
- Chronic worker shortages in the food and farming sector as a result of Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic could push food prices even higher and lead to more having to be imported, MPs have warned. Parliamentarians on the environment, food and rural affairs committee reported that the sector had half a million vacancies in August last year, representing an eighth of all roles.
- The government will unveil its long-awaited energy strategy tomorrow, with rising bills one of the main pressures on household finances. Boris Johnson told reporters in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, that there was a “limit to the amount of taxpayers’ money” that could be used to address the problem.
- The job of keeping the UK’s electricity and gas flowing will be returned to public control by 2024, under government plans for the effective nationalisation of a division of National Grid. A new public body, the “Future Systems Operator” will have responsibility for planning and managing energy distribution, with a focus on the challenges posed by decarbonisation.
That’s it from me today. Thanks for joining me.
For the latest news on Ukraine, follow our dedicated live blog:
Hospital trusts in Yorkshire have warned patients they may have to wait for up to 12 hours to be seen at accident and emergency (A&E), after a sharp increase in demand.
The West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts (WYAAT), which covers six hospitals in West Yorkshire and Harrogate, has issued a plea for patients to attend their local A&E only in “genuine life-threatening situations”.
The warning came after the clinical director of a hospital in Lancashire said patients were routinely waiting more than two days for a bed, with staff left “crying with frustration and anger”.
“For the past few months we have on a regular basis had more than 50 patients waiting for a bed and that wait being in excess of 60 hours,” Graham Ellis, the clinical director of Royal Preston hospital told the hospital trust’s executive team in a letter leaked to the Health Service Journal.
He added:
We have witnessed senior experienced staff crying with frustration and anger as they have had to resuscitate patients in the waiting room, examine in the viewing room and CT changing room, seen patients leave the department as they have been pulled out of a cubicle to allow someone more unwell to be treated in their former space and patients die without the dignity of privacy.
Read the full story here:
Boris Johnson has said he does not “think that biological males should be competing in female sporting events”, amid the fallout from his decision not to ban conversion practices for people questioning their gender.
Speaking on Wednesday, the prime minister said the issue “wasn’t something I thought that I would have to consider in great detail”. Johnson also said that women should have spaces in hospitals, prisons and changing rooms which were “dedicated to women”.
“That’s as far as my thinking has developed on this issue,” Johnson told a journalist during a visit to a hospital in Hertfordshire. “And if that puts me in conflict with some others, then we have got to work it all out.”
He added:
That doesn’t mean that I’m not immensely sympathetic to people who want to change gender, to transition, and it’s vital that we give people the maximum possible love and support in making those decisions.
But these are complex issues. And I don’t think they can be solved with one swift, easy piece of legislation … it takes a lot of thought to get this right.
He also insisted it was right to exclude people who were questioning their gender from a long-promised ban on so-called conversion “therapy”.
After the resignation of a senior equality adviser and cancellation of the government’s flagship international LGBT conference in the face of a mass withdrawal of support from stakeholders, the prime minister said he was “sad” at their response.
Read more from my colleagues Aubrey Allegretti and Libby Brooks here:
The UK has imposed a sweeping set of sanctions on Russia in response to the atrocities committed in Ukraine.
Asset freezes have been imposed on Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, and the Credit Bank of Moscow.
All new outward investment to Russia has been banned and the UK has also committed to end all imports of Russian coal and oil by the end of the year, with gas to follow as soon as possible.
Imports of Russian iron and steel products will be banned and a further eight oligarchs have also been added to the sanctions list.
Liz Truss said the package was “some of our toughest sanctions yet”.
The foreign secretary said:
Our latest wave of measures will bring an end to the UK’s imports of Russian energy and sanction yet more individuals and businesses, decimating (Vladimir) Putin’s war machine.
Together with our allies, we are showing the Russian elite that they cannot wash their hands of the atrocities committed on Putin’s orders.
We will not rest until Ukraine prevails.
Follow our dedicated liveblog on the invasion of Ukraine here:
The job of keeping the UK’s electricity and gas flowing will be returned to public control by 2024, under government plans for the effective nationalisation of a division of National Grid.
A new public body, the “Future Systems Operator” will have responsibility for planning and managing energy distribution, with a focus on the challenges posed by decarbonisation.
The government said the plan, announced on the eve of the publication of its long-awaited energy strategy, would “drive progress towards net zero while maintaining energy security and minimising costs for consumers.”
BEIS said the National Grid, a stock market-listed company since 1995, would be “appropriately compensated” in a transaction that will see the government take control of its Electricity System Operator, the part of the business that keeps the lights on. Gas distribution assets will also be taken into state ownership.
The National Grid’s chief executive, John Pettigrew, said National Grid “has a critical role to play in the decarbonisation of the economy to reach net zero, while continuing to ensure security of supply at the lowest cost to consumers.”
He said:
We have been working closely with government, industry and the regulator to create a Future System Operator that enables long-term holistic thinking, drives progress towards net zero, and lays the foundations for the regulatory reform necessary to deliver a clean, fair and affordable energy transition.
We will continue to work closely with all relevant parties to ensure a smooth transition, subject to parliamentary approval and conclusion of the transaction process.
Read more here:
PA reports that divisions in the Conservative party over the privatisation of Channel 4 are bursting into the open, with the plans likely to face a bumpy ride in parliament.
Tory MP and Father of the House Sir Peter Bottomley told the PA news agency the House of Lords will take out any clause that privatises the network, and announced he will make a speech shortly after the Queen’s speech in the Commons explaining why he deems the plans “unconservative”.
The government confirmed on Monday that it will proceed with plans to privatise Channel 4, which has been publicly owned since it was founded in 1982 and is funded by advertising.
The culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, said that while Channel 4 held a “cherished place in British life” she felt that public ownership was holding the broadcaster back from “competing against streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon”.
Plans for the sale will reportedly be set out in a white paper later this month and will be included in a new media bill for next spring.
After the government made the announcement, it became clear that privatisation plans were not sitting well, not only with media personalities but also with senior figures in the Conservative party.
A string of Tory MPs and peers, including Sir Peter, former Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, chair of the digital, culture, media and sport (DCMS) committee Julian Knight, and former cabinet ministers Damian Green and Jeremy Hunt publicly questioned the plans.
Updated
Sir Keir Starmer has said ministers should honour their promises to ban all forms of conversion therapy.
Speaking during a visit to Bacup in Lancashire, the Labour leader said:
“Conversion therapy in all its forms should be banned. That used to be the government’s position.
“They have been flip-flopping on this over the last few days. The need to stick to their promises.”
Sir Keir accused ministers of using the issue to try to distract from the cost-of-living crisis as the rise in national insurance contributions kicked in.
“They know that what is keeping people awake at night is the cost of living, whether they can pay their bills or not,” he said.
“In order to try to distract from that the government wants to create an argument about conversion therapy. It is not going to wash.”
Updated
Hospitals and ambulance services across England are under “enormous strain” fuelled by “heavy demand”, “severe” staff shortages and soaring Covid cases, health leaders have warned after NHS trusts covering millions of patients declared critical incidents.
Dr Layla McCay, director of policy at the NHS Confederation, which represents the whole healthcare system, said the situation had become so serious that “all parts” of the health service were now becoming “weighed down”. This will have a “direct knock-on effect” on the ability of staff to tackle the care backlog, she added, as well as the current provision of urgent and emergency care.
She sounded the alarm after a major ambulance trust, South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS), which covers 7 million people across Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Sussex and Surrey, declared a critical incident after “extreme pressures” forced it to prioritise patients with life-threatening illnesses.
Updated
Following on from the post about Rishi Sunak’s waning popularity, a separate poll from Ipsos Mori also shows that his favourability ratings have dropped to the lowest since he became chancellor.
It found that:
- 26% of Britons are favourable towards the chancellor and 44% unfavourable.
- 56% think country heading in the wrong direction – highest number this parliament.
- 52% think Johnson should resign if issued with a fixed penalty notice over partygate.
NEW from @IpsosUK: Rishi Sunak's favourability scores fall to their lowest since he became Chancellor:
— Keiran Pedley (@keiranpedley) April 6, 2022
Favourable: 26% (-10 from March)
Unfavourable: 44% (+11)
Net: -18
Sunak has only ever had a negative favourable rating one other time in our series (-6 in Jan 2022)
THREAD pic.twitter.com/Xh85j0Ui5b
1/ Meanwhile - the proportion of Britons that think things are heading in the 'wrong direction' is the highest this parliament at 56% (+12 pts from March).
— Keiran Pedley (@keiranpedley) April 6, 2022
Was 53% in October 2020 - though it should be said the 'net' score was -35 then and now. pic.twitter.com/mjYSxzrfVz
2/ This months trends do seem economy related given the sharpness of Sunak's fall compared to Johnson.
— Keiran Pedley (@keiranpedley) April 6, 2022
Boris Johnson's numbers worsen a little but not to the same extent (changes from March);
Favourable: 25% (-2)
Unfavourable: 54% (+2) pic.twitter.com/P4IMtTIofK
Updated
The Scottish Conservatives today diverged from the Westminster party as they committed to voting for a ban on conversion practices – including a ban on trans conversion therapy – in forthcoming Holyrood legislation.
In January, a Holyrood committee published a report calling for an immediate ban on the “traumatising” practice in Scotland, with the recommendations being welcomed as a fully comprehensive prohibition, with no exemptions.
But the Scottish party also announced that “supporting women’s spaces in council-run venues including schools, parks and swimming pools” would be a key plank of its manifesto for the May council elections.
Welcoming the recent EHRC guidelines on same-sex spaces – which have caused much concern and distress amongst the LGBTQ+ community – as providing “necessary clarity”, the Scottish Conservative spokeswoman on gender reform, Meghan Gallacher MSP, said:
Our local government manifesto will include a commitment to protect women’s same-sex spaces. It is essential that we continue to respect women’s safety. We cannot allow long-held rights to be eroded.”
Many women feel that their place in society and their safety is under threat. Those views should be heard and respected, not dismissed, as they have been on too many occasions.
Updated
Rishi Sunak’s popularity with voters has plunged amid continuing debate over the government’s reaction to surging living costs, according to a poll.
His net favourability was down 24 points since just before his spring statement on 23 March, to reach minus 29, the survey by YouGov found.
Rishi Sunak's favourability has tumbled even further since the immediate aftermath of the Spring Statement. It is now 24pts lower than it was the day before the SS
— YouGov (@YouGov) April 6, 2022
22-23 Mar (before SS): -5 net favourability
23-24 Mar (after SS): -15
4-5 Apr: -29https://t.co/KOUovDiptH pic.twitter.com/4J02BsSYbV
The poll put the Chancellor’s support below that of Keir Starmer (minus 25) for the first time since the Labour leader took office, PA News reports.
Minus 29 is Sunak’s lowest ever result and is a 24-point decrease since 22-23 March, and a 14-point drop since immediately after the spring statement, the figures showed.
The poll found more than half of Britons (57%) have an unfavourable opinion of the chancellor, compared with 28% who view him in a positive light.
Sunak’s net favourability with 2019 Conservative voters was 6, a fall of 23 points from March 23-24, and a drop from 41 just before the spring statement.
Net favourability ratings
— YouGov (@YouGov) April 6, 2022
Keir Starmer: -25
Rishi Sunak: -29
Boris Johnson: -42
Priti Patel: -57
Liz Truss: -29 (35% say don't know)https://t.co/KOUovDiptH pic.twitter.com/KLh6yN5K9M
The prime minister’s net favourability among Britons was minus 34, down 8 points from March 23-24.
Boris Johnson’s favourability among 2019 Conservative voters was 7.
Starmer’s net favourability of minus 25 is down from minus 21 on 23-24 March, while his net favourability among Labour voters is 20 – 13 points higher than that of Johnson among conservative voters.
The findings were based on a survey of 2,120 British adults on 4-5 April, YouGov said.
YouGov says:
The aftermath of the spring statement and the ongoing cost-of-living crisis seem to be continuing to have a devastating effect on Rishi Sunak’s popularity among the British public.
The chancellor’s spring statement has been criticised as failing to support lower-income households through the worst cost-of-living crisis in decades and caused widespread anger among those who stand to suffer most from spiralling prices.
Updated
Speaking against the national insurance rise, Keir Starmer said now is “not the time” to be putting up taxes.
The Labour leader told Jeremy Vine on BBC Radio 2
This is a tax that hits businesses and working people. It doesn’t hit others.
So, if you’re a landlord with 20 or 30 properties, you are not getting a penny more taxed today. If you’re a tenant of that landlord in work, you’re getting whacked with the national insurance tax.
Starmer stressed a Labour government “will always support the NHS” and “there is obviously a need to deal with the backlog of waiting lists, etc”, but added:
The problem I have got with this tax today is that it’s going to raise about 12bn or so, 11 or 12bn.
That is the money that has been lost in the last two years through Covid, through equipment we didn’t need or fraud, and the government is not going to try to recover that money.
When asked if the country is heading towards the next election with Labour promising lower tax and lower spending than the Conservatives, the Labour leader said:
We have declared that now is not the time to be putting up taxes.
I think most people know the last two years have been really, really tough. All the businesses in Bacup I have spoken to this morning are saying: ‘ook, Keir, it has been tough on us, we have kept going and now what we need to do is get back on our feet, get people back into the high streets, give us a bit of breathing space so we can grow the economy.’
I think they’re right about that. So, I’m not saying that, you know, we don’t need to raise money to pay for the health service. Of course I’m not, but I am saying that the single biggest problem the moment is growing the economy.
Updated
Ed Davey said the UK could be on a “slippery slope” when it came to its free press as he vowed to fight plans to privatise Channel 4.
The Liberal Democrat leader told PA news agency at his party’s local election campaign launch in south-west London:
We have huge numbers of commercial stations, and that’s great.
Do we really need to get rid of the remaining public service broadcasters? The Liberal Democrat answer is absolutely not. We should be strengthening and supporting them.
I really worry that what we’re seeing is what we’ve seen in the United States with Fox News and countries like – I’m not saying it is going quite this far – Hungary and (Viktor) Orban, where they like to close down the free, independent press.
We are going to fight that every step of the way. It is a slippery slope. We have to protect our free press, our independent press, and there are too many moves the conservative government is making that I think is undermining our free press, and we are going to fight to stop them.
Updated
Ed Davey has said he is worried about the conservative government’s approach to public broadcasting after ministers announced plans to privatise Channel 4.
The Channel 4 move is seen as the biggest sell-off of a publicly-owned company since the Royal Mail – a decision taken when the Lib Dems were in a coalition government with the conservatives.
The Liberal Democrat leader told PA news agency at his party’s local election campaign launch that the Royal Mail decision had been about “looking after low-paid” workers because it was “losing huge amounts of money” and people faced losing their pensions and jobs.
He said:
The privatisation of Channel 4 is a completely different issue and we are totally against it.
That has been in our manifesto, it is still our policy.
I am deeply worried about what the conservatives are doing to our public broadcasting, whether that is the attacks on the BBC we keep getting and now the privatisation of Channel 4.
The government will unveil its long-awaited energy strategy on Thursday, with rising bills one of the main pressures on household finances.
Boris Johnson told reporters in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, that there was a “limit to the amount of taxpayers’ money” that could be used to address the problem.
We will do everything we can to help people with the the energy price spikes, which ... are a global thing, they are being exacerbated by what (Vladimir) Putin is doing in Ukraine. We’ll have to see how long that goes on for.
But, as we did during Covid, we will make sure we look after people to the best of our ability.
Now, we’ve got to be frank with people, there’s a limit to the amount of taxpayers’ money we can simply push towards trying to deal with global energy price spikes.
What we can do is make sure that we fix some of the long-term problems and I think it was a great mistake not to invest long-term in nuclear power. And I’ll be saying a lot more about that tomorrow.
He said it was also possible to be “more urgent” in rolling out some renewable power generation.
Boris Johnson said he had “absolutely no problem” with hiking national insurance to help fund the NHS.
Speaking in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, he said:
I’ve got absolutely no problem with it. We’ve got to do the difficult things.
We’ve got to take the big decisions, the right decisions for this country.
Johnson said he wanted 75% of people waiting no more than 28 days for a cancer diagnosis but “it’s only possible if you invest now”.
“It’s the biggest priority for the country,” he said.
Johnson acknowledged households would face choices to help make ends meet.
Asked whether families should eat cheaper food, not replace clothes, turn down the thermostat or turn heating off entirely, the prime minister said:
People obviously are going to face choices that they are going to have to make.
We in the government will do everything that we can to help.
The “most important thing” that could be done was to have a “strong, robust economy in which you have a high level of security in your employment”.
Boris Johnson defends national insurance increase despite admitting households face 'unquestionably tough times'
Boris Johnson has defended the national insurance increase but acknowledged households were facing “unquestionably tough times”.
Speaking at a hospital in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, he said:
What we are doing today is unquestionably the right thing for our country, it’s the right thing for the NHS.
Because we’ve got, here in the UK, we’ve now got backlogs, waiting lists of six million people.
Everybody across the country knows somebody who is waiting for cancer treatment or some sort of procedure that’s crucial for their health.
We’ve got to give our doctors and our nurses the wherewithal, the funding, to deal with that.
The prime minister said the government would help families “in any way that we can”, including the 22 billion package of measures announced to support households “through what are unquestionably tough times caused by the end of the pandemic, the global inflation problem, the energy price spike”.
Updated
Ed Davey has kicked off the Liberal Democrats’ local elections campaign by the River Wandle in Wimbledon, south-west London.
The party leader told supporters:
Life has been tough for so many people, it is still tough.
They are rising to the challenge, they are raising their families, caring for others, playing by the rules.
Now, more than ever, they deserve a fair deal, but the rising cost of energy, soaring energy bills, are overwhelming millions of families and pensioners.
Yet this Conservative government either doesn’t care or doesn’t get it. The Conservatives are raising unfair taxes again and again.
He also accused Tory MPs of voting consistently “to allow water companies to pour their filthy sewage into our waters”.
Sewage has become a major battleground in the local elections in so-called “blue wall” seats, where the Liberal Democrats are challenging the Conservatives, from Guildford to Cambridgeshire.
The Lib Dems have put eliminating sewage dumps at the heart of their campaign, with the party leader, Ed Davey, planning to launch their fight at the River Wandle in Wimbledon on Wednesday. He is calling for a tax on sewage companies to fund the clean up of local rivers, which can see waste pumped out into the environment when there is heavy rainfall.
The Tories have been under huge public pressure over the issue since the government rejected a House of Lords amendment to put a legal duty on water companies to phase out pumping waste into rivers last autumn.
However, in a sign of how contested the issue has become, some Tory election material on social media has misleadingly accused the Lib Dems of “voting against a legal duty to clean up rivers”. Lib Dem MPs opposed the government’s plans in favour of stronger legal duties backed by opposition parties.
A Liberal Democrat source said:
Conservative MPs are clearly running scared of the huge public backlash over sewage. Their desperate new social media tactics just won’t cut it.
Read more here:
Keir Starmer says the national insurance rise is “the wrong tax at the wrong time”.
The Labour leader said:
People are really, really struggling to pay their bills. And this is just going to impact on them very, very hard.
Starmer told BBC Radio 5 Live the government had chosen to place the burden on people in employment, while protecting those who made income from renting out property and share dividends.
He said:
There are lots of landlords who’ve got many, many properties and they are not going to be paying a penny more in tax. Their tenants, who are going out to work, are going to be paying more in tax.
Instead, Starmer said the “general approach should be that income of all its forms should be taxed fairly” and promised to set out Labour’s plan to follow that before the next general election, due to take place in about two years.
National insurance increase is right and fair, says Sajid Javid
The increase in national insurance payments for millions of people already struggling to deal with the cost of living crisis is both right and fair, the health secretary has said.
Sajid Javid said the levy of an extra 1.25 percentage points, due from Wednesday, was needed to pay for health and social care after the pandemic.
The government has pressed ahead with its plans to increase national insurance contributions for both workers and businesses, despite calls from businesses groups, unions and some Conservative MPs to at least delay the introduction.
A planned change to free some of the country’s lowest earners from national insurance contributions altogether is not due to be implemented until the summer.
Read more here:
Updated
It would be “morally wrong” to let “our children pay for our healthcare and our adult social care”, Sajid Javid has said.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast, the health secretary said:
The choice for us as a country is we either put that money in ourselves now, and if we don’t do it ourselves, we will have to borrow it. And that is mortgaging the future of our children and our grandchildren.
I think it not only is economically wrong and opens up more risk for the public finances, I think it is morally wrong.
Why should our children pay for our healthcare and our adult social care? They are going to have enough challenges as they grow older. I think that will be the wrong approach.
The financial pressures on many UK households and businesses have intensified today, as national insurance rates are lifted to raise funds for the NHS and social care.
Despite the cost of living crisis, the government has pressed on with its manifesto-busting 1.25 percentage point rise in national insurance, announced last September.
The move means millions of workers will begin paying higher National Insurance contributions from today, the start of the new tax year.
Businesses will also see their contributions rise, at a time when they’re already juggling rising costs. Tax rates for dividend income also rise by 1.25 percentage points.
Businesses groups, unions and some Conservative MPs had all pushed the government to delay the increase, given the financial pressures on workers and companies.
The “health and social care levy” is expected to raise around £12bn per year, to tackle the backlog of cases at the NHS due to the pandemic, and also reform routine services.
Today’s changes mean those earning above £9,880 will now be liable for 13.25% NI contributions, up from 12%. Earnings above £50,270 will be charged a rate of 3.25%, up from 2%.
But from July, national insurance will only start to be charged on earnings over £12,570, because chancellor Rishi Sunak announced a £3,000 rise in the NI threshold in last month’s spring statement. That will take around two million workers out of direct tax altogether (if they earn less than £12,570 per year).
According to Resolution Foundation, everyone earning less than £32,000 a year will be better off from the combination of those two policies from July.
But there are other changes kicking in for the new tax year, including a freeze on income tax thresholds. That will drag more people into paying tax, or more tax, if their pay increases over the next few years.
That will make it harder for households to handle rising costs, such as last week’s surge in energy bills.
April 2022 will see the UK’s cost of living crisis intensify as energy prices jump by more than half overnight, pushing 5 million English households into fuel stress, even accounting for support measures recently announced by the Chancellor: https://t.co/1sL3kMHK30 pic.twitter.com/6O4gOARCCp
— Resolution Foundation (@resfoundation) April 5, 2022
Prime minister Boris Johnson has defended the national insurance increases, saying the health service needs the extra resources:
We must be there for our NHS in the same way that it is there for us. Covid led to the longest waiting lists we’ve ever seen, so we will deliver millions more scans, checks and operations in the biggest catch-up programme in the NHS’s history.
We know this won’t be a quick fix, and we know that we can’t fix waiting lists without fixing social care. Our reforms will end the cruel lottery of spiralling and unpredictable care costs once and for all and bring the NHS and social care closer together. The Levy is the necessary, fair and responsible next step, providing our health and care system with the long term funding it needs as we recover from the pandemic.
The government says the levy means:
- It will begin raising billions to tackle Covid backlogs and reform routine services.
- £39bn over the next three years will put health and care services on a sustainable footing.
- It will deliver biggest catch-up programme in NHS history and end spiralling social care costs.
You can follow the business liveblog which is covering the rise in national insurance in detail today:
Updated
One thing no government can control is NHS demand, the health secretary has said.
When asked when the NHS waiting list will start falling, Sajid Javid told BBC Breakfast:
I have been really straightforward about this. What we can do in the NHS is increase activity levels and that is exactly what this extra funding is going to do. The one thing that no government can control is demand for the NHS, especially on the back of a pandemic.
We estimate some 11 million people stayed away from the NHS during the height of the pandemic. I think we can all understand why that happened. I want those people to come back.
I want them to know that the NHS is there, that it’s open for them. I want them to be seen.
What I don’t know, no-one knows, is what proportion of those people will come back. Is it 50%? Is it 70% or 30%? That is why it’s very hard to put a number on where the waiting list goes. It is already at six million and it will go higher before it starts to come down.
The chair of the the environment, food and rural affairs committee, which has published a report about “acute labour shortages” in the food and farming industry, said he was “hopeful” the home office was listening to concerns.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Neil Parish said:
I am hopeful that the Home Office is listening but they must listen and do something about it rather than just leave it and it’ll sort itself out, because it won’t.
Chronic worker shortages in the food and farming sector as a result of Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic could push food prices even higher and lead to more having to be imported, MPs have warned.
Parliamentarians on the environment, food and rural affairs committee reported that the sector had half a million vacancies in August last year, representing an eighth of all roles.
The huge labour shortages in the food industry have led to unharvested crops being left to rot in fields, the cull of healthy pigs on farms because of a lack of workers at meat processing plants, and disruption to the food supply chain, as well as threatening the UK’s food security.
The committee – which is chaired by the Conservative MP Neil Parish, along with five other Conservatives, four Labour MPs and one Scottish National party colleague – wrote in a report that the workforce shortfall was the “single biggest factor affecting the sector”.
The food industry is the UK’s largest manufacturing sector but MPs issued the stark warning that it could shrink permanently if the government does not address the acute labour shortages, which could lead to wage rises, price increases, reduced competitiveness and, ultimately, food production being exported abroad.
They found that food and farming businesses have been badly hit by a lack of workers, with the pig sector particularly affected, prompting a crisis in domestic production. Industry associations have previously claimed that as many as 40 independent farms have left the sector as a result.
Farmers have been warning for some time about a lack of workers, after many overseas workers went home during the pandemic, and Brexit has limited the number of EU temporary workers who can travel to the UK on the seasonal worker visa scheme.
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Ed Davey: Tories increasing national insurance 'just at the wrong moment'
Increasing national insurance for millions of workers is unfair and comes at the wrong time as the nation faces a cost-of-living crisis, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has said.
He told BBC Breakfast that “the NHS and the care system does need money but it needs to be done in a fair way”.
On the national insurance rise, he said:
It doesn’t tax the unearned income of very wealthy people. It doesn’t tax the income of landlords. It puts all the burden on working people – that is wrong.
Yes, we need more money for the NHS and social care. The Conservatives starved it of money and one reason why the pandemic was so difficult was that the Tories had underfunded the NHS.
He said that income tax could go up a penny in the pound because that “spreads the burden and makes sure that wealthy people do pay their fair share”.
Davey told the programme:
The problem we have at the moment is that the conservatives are not only taking an unfair approach to funding the NHS, but they are putting this tax rise up just at the wrong moment.
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The health secretary has defended the decision to hike up national insurance for millions of workers as he argued it is “right that we pay for what we are going to use as a country”.
Sajid Javid told Sky News it was “necessary” because of the impact of the pandemic, which is going to have an impact for years.
It kicks in today, the new health and social care levy. All of the funding raised from it is going to go towards the extra 39 billion we are going to put in over the next three years to health and social care.
It’s going to pay in the NHS for activity levels that are some 130% of pre-pandemic, it’s going to be nine million more scans, tests and procedures, meaning people will get seen a lot earlier.
Why is any of this necessary, whether it is for health or social care? It’s because of the impact of the pandemic. We know it is unprecedented. It has been the biggest challenge in our lifetime. The impact of that is going to continue for many years.
He added:
You asked me about the fairness of it. When we spend money on public services, whether it’s NHS or anything else, for that matter, the money can only come from two sources. You raise it directly for people today, that’s through taxes, or you borrow it, which essentially you are asking the next generation to pay for it.
I think it is right that we pay for what we are going to use as a country but we do it in a fair way. This levy, the way it is being raised is the top 15% of earners will pay almost 50%. I think that is the right way to do this.
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Two-child policy hasn’t made UK families smaller, only poorer – research
It was one of the Conservatives’ most controversial cuts: waging war on the UK’s “benefit culture” by restricting social security payments that supposedly enabled “welfare scroungers” to have large families they could ill-afford.
The two-child policy – which limits benefits payments to the first two children born to the poorest households – would, proponents argued, cut the welfare bill and bring “feckless” parents to heel by – as one minister put it – teaching them “the reality that children cost money.”
New research, however, indicates the behavioural change aspect of the policy has dismally failed. Since its introduction exactly five years ago today, the fertility rate for third and subsequent children born to poorer families has barely fallen. Instead, the main impact of the policy has been to become the biggest single driver of child poverty.
Prof Jonathan Portes, co-author of the study said:
In the absence of a behavioural fertility response to the policy, the main function of the two-child limit is to deprive families living on a low income of approximately £3,000 a year. This will inevitably lead to dramatic increases in child poverty among larger families.
Analysis of birth records and household survey data for the study, commissioned by the Nuffield Foundation, found the policy’s introduction in 2017 led to a decline in births of third children of just 5,600 a year – fewer than 1% of the total annual births in England and Wales.
The study speculates as to why the policy has had so little behavioural impact. Unpublished research suggests over half of families were unaware of the policy before they were affected. Many large families – Orthodox Jewish and Muslim families are disproportionately affected – may ignore it for religious reasons.
The research comes as fresh estimates suggest that 1.4 million children in more than 400,000 families in the UK are affected by the two-child policy. April’s below-inflation benefits rise means affected families with three children face a £983 a month shortfall in benefits, with larger families facing an even bigger hole in their income.
Sara Ogilvie of Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), which produced the estimates, said:
The two-child limit is a brutal policy that punishes children simply for having brothers and sisters. It forces families to survive on less than they need, and with soaring living costs the hardship and hunger these families face will only intensify.
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