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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

Boris Johnson defends breaking manifesto pledge as he sets out tax rise for NHS and social care – as it happened

Early evening summary

  • Johnson is set to comfortably win a vote on his plans scheduled for tomorrow evening after Conservative MPs with reservations about the tax increase rallied to his side. Over the last week, as leaks emerged about what was planned, many Tories spoke out about the proposals - either in unattributable comments to journalists, or in interviews. The Tory MP Stephen McPartland said this afternoon that, given what he knows at the moment, he could not back the plan.

But even McPartland has not said he will vote against the plan tomorrow, and the rebellion expected by journalists has fizzled out. The PM’s decision to link the national insurance hike not just to social care, but to rescuing the NHS, seems to have had a significant impact. (See 3.30pm.)

  • Sajid Javid, the health secretary, has admitted that it may take longer than three years to clear the backlog for NHS operations. The government has said that over the next three years the bulk of the £36bn raised over that period by the new tax will go to the NHS, to help it recover from Covid. (See 12.50pm.) At a news conference in Downing Street, Javid said that over time more of the money would go to social care and less to the NHS. But he could not give details of how the money would be allocated over time and, when asked if the backlog would be cleared in three years, he said: “We’re going to try and tackle as much of the backlog as we can.” This is from my colleague Peter Walker.

And this is from Sky’s Kate McCann.

  • Johnson has said that he does not want any more tax rises this parliament - but he has refused to rule them out. (See 4.39pm.)
  • Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, has said the tax increase is required because today’s decision means there is a “permanent new role for the government” that needs to be funded. (See 4.14pm.) The Institute for Fiscal Studies says the decision has taken the UK tax burden to its highest-ever sustained level. (See 2.04pm.)
  • Johnson has refused to rule out holding a reshuffle later this week. Here is LBC’s Matthew Thompson on what this might mean.
Boris Johnson announcing his health and social care plan in the Commons
Boris Johnson announcing his health and social care plan in the Commons Photograph: Jessica Taylor/Parliament

Updated

Nicola Sturgeon has told civil servants to start making a new case for independence, which offers people “an informed choice on Scotland’s future” in the Scottish government’s first legislative programme since last month’s cooperation deal with the Scottish Greens, my colleague Libby Brooks reports.

These are from the Resolution Foundation thinktank on the PM’s health and social care plan.

The TUC has criticised the government’s decision to suspend the pension triple lock. In a statement Frances O’Grady, the TUC’s general secretary, said:

The UK has one of the least generous state pensions in the developed world.

The triple lock was introduced to close this gap and lift pensioners out of poverty. Suspending it will only halt our progress.

This is a dangerous precedent. If the government is allowed to pick and choose when to apply the triple lock, the result will be lower state pensions for future generations and more pensioners experiencing hardship.

George Osborne, the former Tory chancellor, claims today’s health and social care announcement is consistent with traditional, Conservative “sound money” economics.

According to the FT’s Jim Pickard, Tory MPs do not think any of their colleagues will vote against the £12bn tax increase tomorrow.

This is from my colleague Rafael Behr, who is not impressed by Labour’s response to the PM’s health and social care announcement.

Snap polling suggests public divided over merits of PM's plan

Two polling companies have produced snap polls on the PM’s plan for health and social care.

YouGov says the public are split roughly 50/50 on whether or not they support the national insurance rise.

And Savanta ComRes has found a broadly similar split - although they asked a different question, and found 46% of respondents saying it was “acceptable” for Johnson to break a manifesto pledge.

This suggests that William Hague, the former Tory leader, may have overestimated the dangers of a party breaking its manifesto promise in his Times column this morning. (See 11.09am.) Perhaps when people voted for Boris Johnson in 2019, the notion that he was a politician who would keep his promises was not central to his appeal.

But Savanta ComRes also found that people thought it would be better to raise income tax than national insurance.

This is from ITV’s Anushka Asthana on the curious silence of the Tory “rebels” on the national insurance hike (or the non-rebels, as they have turned out).

Johnson tries for the second time to wrap up the press conference - this time successfully.

And as he does so he claims he did not answer the reshuffle question (see 4.49pm) because he wanted this press conference to be about policy, not about party political matters.

And that’s it. I will post a summary shortly.

Q: Will this tax have an impact on jobs and the recovery?

Johnson says he does not think so.

Sunak says the smallest 40% of businesses will not be affected because of the employment allowance.

The next smallest 40% will only face an average increase of £450, he says. That amounts to less than 1% of their wage bill.

He says 70% of the revenue will come from the largest 1% of businesses.

Johnson ignores a question from my colleague Heather Stewart about whether he will hold a reshuffle next week. He answers her other questions, but ignores this one. The Sun’s Harry Cole points out that he did not answer. Johnson laughs, but still ignores the question.

Q: Initially less than £1 in six will got to social care. When will it to up to 50/50?

Javid says he does not want to give a precise figure, because it will depend on what happens in terms of addressing the backlog for hospital treatment.

Q: So you won’t have dealt with the whole of the backlog for three years?

Javid says he wants to address as much of it as possible then.

Johnson tries to wrap up the press conference, but the Mirror’s Pippa Crerar objects, saying more people want to ask questions. Johnson relents, and agrees to take more.

(This is one advantage of having press conferences conducted with journalists in the room, rather than remotely.)

Q: How realistic will it be to stop using the majority of this money for health, and to start using it for social care?

Johnson says as the reforms kick in, the increment going to social care goes up.

Q: You said you wanted a cross-party agreement on social care. Why did you fail to get this?

Johnson says a cross-party parliamentary committee did back the idea of a levy for social care, funded by national insurance.

Q: Why are you abandoning pensioners by suspending the triple lock?

Johnson says he does not accept that. The government is trying to address a “statistical freak”, he says.

Sunak stresses that the triple lock is only being suspended for this year.

Updated

Johnson says he does not want any more tax rises this parliament - but refuses to firmly rule them out

Q: One final chance to rule out further tax rises?

Johnson says he does not want any more tax rises this parliament. He describes that as an emotional commitment. But he says there are formalities that mean fiscal matters are reserved.

(That is nonsense, of course. He could rule out further tax rises if he wanted to, as he did in the 2019 manifesto.)

Johnson says as London mayor he cut council tax.

Updated

Q: You have broken a series of promises to voters. This appears to be part and parcel of how you conduct business in government. Aren’t you worried about losing the faith of voters?

Johnson says nobody in any manifesto he read saw a pandemic coming in which the government would have to spend billions supporting the economy.

He says he had to make a choice. He has chosen to raise money for the NHS and address the social care problem. This will make a huge, positive difference to millions of families, he says.

Q: You are using the pandemic as cover. How would you have paid for social care reform otherwise?

Johnson says the Covid crisis has changed the situation to one that could not have been foreseen. He has to respond to what people see as the national priority.

Q: You have announced a £10bn tax rise for workers today, on top of a £25bn tax rise in the budget. You are supposed to be a Thatcherite. Are you comfortable losing your reputation for low taxes. And can you promise there will be no further tax rises?

Sunak says the government borrowed more last year than at any time since the second world war . People know times are difficult. He says he hopes the Conservatives will be seen as being responsible with the nation’s finances.

Q: Can you rule out further tax rises?

Johnson says fiscal matters are for the chancellor.

Sky’s Beth Rigby, who is asking these questions, says he is here, so he could answer.

Johnson carries on. He says he, Sunak and Javid are as committed to bearing down on taxes as anyone in the Conservative party. But they have to be pragmatic.

Updated

Q: You have broken two manifesto promises today. How will people be able to believe anything you say?

Johnson says Covid was not in the manifesto either.

He is addressing waiting lists, but also addressing one of the problems of waiting lists - delayed discharges, which are related to people not being able to access care.

Q: These plans won’t affect people receiving care now, will they?

Javid says they will come in from October 2023. He admits that before then people will not be helped. But with any policy there has to be a start date, he says.

Q: The tax burden has risen to its highest level. Can you still say the Tories are the party of low taxation?

Sunak says no one likes raising taxes. But there is a compelling case for these measures, he says.

He says he hopes people will at least respect “the honesty and responsibility” the government is showing, even if they do not like the tax rise.

Javid says he was told that if he did nothing, waiting lists would rise to 13m.

Johnson is now taking questions.

He asks the journalists to address questions to just one person on the platform, not one question each to all three of them.

He calls Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC’s political editor, who immediately makes it clear she will take no notice. It would be odd not to hear from all three of them, she says.

Johnson admits trying to limit questions was a vain hope.

Q: How is it fair for everyone to have to pay to protect the homes of rich people?

Johnson says the measures being announced today, such as lifting the floor (the maximum you can have in assets before you have to start paying) and the ceiling (the maximum you can have while still qualifying for state help), will help everyone.

Q: But what about people who don’t have assets, just wages?

Johnson says they will have relatives who will need care, and who will be affected.

And everyone needs waiting lists cleared, he says.

Sajid Javid, the health secretary, says waiting lists would rise to 13m if the government does nothing.

Most of the funds from the new health levy will initially go into the health service, he says.

With this money the NHS will be carrying out 9m more checks, operations and scans.

This is from my colleague Heather Stewart, who is at the press conference and is responding to what Rishi Sunak just said.

Sunak says care plan means 'permanent new role for government', which is why new tax needed

Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, says the care plans mean we as a country have decided to share more risk collectively.

Today have created an expanded safety net. Instead of individuals having to bear the financial risks of catastrophic care costs themselves, we as a country are deciding to share more of that risk collectively, This is a permanent new role for the government. And, as such, we need a permanent new way to fund it.

The only alternative would be to borrow more indefinitely. But that would be irresponsible. At a time when our national debt is already the highest it has been in peacetime, and it would be dishonest. Borrowing more today just means higher taxes, tomorrow.

'Global pandemic wasn't in our manifesto either', says Johnson, as he defends breaking election pledge

Johnson is now summarising the plans, using some of the figures from the No 10 briefing earlier. (See 12.50pm.)

He says people with cancer have their costs covered by the NHS in full. But people with a condition like dementia have to pay their own costs unless they meet very high threshold. They could lose everything to pay those costs, he says.

He says what he is doing should have been done a long time ago. He says in England from October 2023 no one will have to pay more than £86,000 over their lifetime.

The government will also invest in the quality of care and carers, he says. He wants caring to be a properly respected profession.

Johnson says no Conservative government wants to raise taxes, and he confirms that this breaks his manifesto. “But a global pandemic wasn’t in our manifesto either,” he says.

Boris Johnson's press conference

Boris Johnson is opening the press conference with a statement that sounds very much like the one he used in the Commons earlier.

He says he has to “level with people”; waiting lists will get worse before they get better.

NHS recovery at the level needed cannot be provided by “cheeseparing budgets elsewhere”, he says.

In its response to the PM’s health and social care plan, the IPPR thinktank says the move is “a clear step forward” but that it is “far from a complete solution” and that “it raises new questions about both the tax and care systems”.

Boris Johnson’s press conference is due to start at 4pm, or shortly afterwards. He will be appearing with Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, and Sajid Javid, the health secretary.

PM's plan will not fix problems in care system, say county councils

The government has said that under its plans people who pay for their own care do not have to pay more than state-funded individuals for equivalent care. (See 12.50pm.) But the County Councils Network, which represents county councils in England, says this will increase costs for local authorities. Martin Tett, the adult social care spokesperson for the network, said:

The County Councils Network (CCN) supports the principles of protecting more people from catastrophic care costs, extending the means-test threshold and a commitment to improve the quality and access to care services. But these reforms alone and the level of investment in the short-term – compared to the NHS – will not deal with existing problems within the system.

Last year, some 58% of all requests from people for social care services in county areas were not eligible for council-arranged care, due to insufficient funding for councils leading to a very high eligibility bar for individuals to access services. A cap on care and extended means-test will not address this – and unless further funding is announced in the spending review, councils will not have the means to increase the level and quality of services provided for care users already within the system and those who needs are currently going unmet, including working-age adults.

CCN recognises the need to address the unfairness in the fee levels paid for care by self-funders compared to local authority clients, but today’s commitment to make them fairer will have enormous implications for councils and providers. At present, private fee payers in effect prop up local care markets by paying significantly more than local authorities, who have not been in a position to raise fees owing to financial pressures. This has led to a care market fee gap of £670m in England’s counties alone, and in order to make private and council fees fairer, significant investment will be needed – possibly more than currently committed. Councils want to work with government to understand the implications on this commitment and ensure that it does not further destabilise local care markets.

Updated

Boris Johnson, Sajid Javid, the health secretary, and Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, have been visiting a care home in Stepney Green in London.

Boris Johnson, Sajid Javid and Rishi Sunak visiting Westport care home in Stepney Green, London.
Boris Johnson, Sajid Javid and Rishi Sunak visiting Westport care home in Stepney Green, London. Photograph: WPA/Getty Images

And Johnson got to paint a mug.

Johnson at the care home.
Johnson at the care home. Photograph: Paul Edwards/The Sun/PA

Labour says Johnson's plan amounts to a 'care con'

And Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, told the World at One that Boris Johnson was offering the nation a “care con” because his plans would not fix the long-term problems with social care. He told the programme:

We’re still looking at the details of the plans but what is pretty clear is we have a manifesto-breaking tax rise on national insurance, which will mean care workers, nurses, midwives, paramedics paying more in tax for a cap in care costs which will not fix any of the longstanding problems in social care.

And indeed when the prime minister says this will mean nobody pays more than £80,000-odd, unless he resolves the discrepancy between what a local authority funds for social care and what you fund as an individual, you could well find that individuals are paying way more than 86,000 because the notional cap is based on what the local authority is prepared to fund. So that is not capping care, I’m afraid that is a care con.

Of course, these are for personal care costs. If you sadly need to move into a nursing home, you still have to pay for the hotel costs, the board and lodging as well, which will also in some circumstances be catastrophic for you individually.

When Boris Johnson stands up in the House of Commons and says he is dealing with these huge costs and nobody will have to give up their homes, I’m afraid he is not being straight with the British public.

Jeremy Hunt, the Conservative former health secretary who has welcomed the PM’s announcement, told the World at One that he did not expect Tory MPs to rebel against the plan in tomorrow’s vote. He explained:

I can’t really imagine any backbenchers wanting to turn round to their own constituents and say they tried to vote down extra money for the NHS and care system.

So I think in the end most MPs will think about where their constituents’ priorities are and most voters will recognise that for a Conservative government, this is a difficult decision but the right thing to do.

Jeremy Hunt.
Jeremy Hunt. Photograph: UK Parliament/Jessica Taylor/PA

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has published a lengthy briefing on today’s health and social care announcement. Overall, it is relatively positive. Here is the opening, from Paul Johnson, the IFS director.

Today’s announcements constituted a budget in all but name. £14bn of tax raised through a supposedly new tax, equivalent increases in spending on health and social care, and an announcement of spending totals for the next three years certainly constitute a major fiscal event. After a quarter century of dithering we may finally have settled on a solution for improving the structure of social care funding, as well as an increase in the amount spent publicly on it. We have a funding package for the NHS which should be enough to prevent post-pandemic waiting lists from spiralling. For “unprotected” departments, the announced spending totals might be enough to avoid cuts, though this is far from certain and depends on the extent of future virus-related spending.

But the IFS briefing also says that “the extra funding [for social care] will not be sufficient to reverse the cuts in the numbers receiving care seen during the 2010s”.

Updated

Johnson emerges unscathed from Commons statement as Tory critics of his plan hold their fire

Boris Johnson spent more than an hour and a half taking questions from MPs, but there was very little evidence from what was said of opposition to his plans from Conservative MPs. All those backbenchers who were happy to denounce the proposals in recent days, either on or off the record, were either absent, or quiet, or else had had a mysterious change of heart.

The most striking example came near the end of the session when Marcus Fysh got his chance to ask a question. At the weekend Fysh published an article in the Sunday Telegraph strongly critical of the government. Here is an excerpt:

I am alarmed at the apparent direction of travel of the government.

I do not believe it is Conservative to penalise individuals of working age and their employers with higher taxes on their employment when our manifesto promised not to.

I do not believe it is Conservative to take a socialist approach to social care and its funding when insurance-based and fairly contributive alternatives exist and operational reform has not been set out.

There was a lot more in the article, which ended: “I just hope to goodness it wakes up before it is too late.”

But when Fysh rose in the chamber, the Sunday Telegraph was a distant memory. Instead he asked:

Will my right honourable friend work with me to examine ways that I can see of getting the finance, the technology and the political sectors together to actually do this in a way that can be less of a burden on the taxpayer?

Johnson, who seemed as if he could hardly believe his luck, said he would, and that he agreed with Fysh about wanting to see the financial services industry step in to help people insure themselves against the costs of social care.

Updated

Jonathan Reynolds, the shadow work and pensions secretary, is responding to Coffey.

He starts by saying he believes governments should keep their promises.

The triple lock is about offering a long-term pension guarantee, he says.

It has made a significant contribution to restoring the value of pensions, he says.

He says the government has also broken manifesto promises on national insurance, and on international aid.

He challenges Coffey to explain the thinking behind her decision. And he asks why the government could not continue to include earnings in the triple lock, while making allowance for the impact of furlough.

He says Labour cannot support what is being proposed without having an explanation of that kind.

Coffey confirms pensions triple lock to be suspended for one year because spike in earnings has created anomaly

Thérèse Coffey, the work and pensions secretary, is now making a statement to MPs about pensions. She says she has to make an annual statement to the Commons about uprating the state pension.

She says average earnings are now rising at 8.8%. The increase for May to July is likely to be over 8%.

This means an adjustment to the triple lock is needed, she says.

She says she will change it so that pensions rise in line with inflation or by 2.5%. Inflation is likely to be the higher of those two figures, she says.

Under the triple lock, pensions are supposed to rise in line with average earnings, or inflation, or 2.5%, whichever is higher. But Coffey says that it would be unfair to apply that this year because the 8% rise in earnings is a “statistical anomaly” created by the large number of people who saw their earnings fall during lockdown.

UPDATE: Coffey said:

At a time when we have made tough decisions to restore the public finances which have impacted working people, such as freezing income tax personal thresholds at current levels, [sticking with the triple lock] would not be fair.

Setting aside the earnings element is temporary and only for one year.

This means we can and will apply the triple lock as usual from next year for the remainder of this parliament in line with our manifesto commitment.

Updated

In response to a complaint from his Labour shadow, Thangam Debbonaire, about the government rushing the vote on the government’s national insurance hike, Rees-Mogg claims what is happening is routine. He says a vote on a ways and means resolution is needed before legislation can be introduced.

Rees-Mogg ignores Debbonaire’s comment about how the leader of the Commons is asking MPs to vote for a tax rise that he seemed to oppose at the weekend.

MPs to vote on Johnson's proposed £12bn tax rise tomorrow, Rees-Mogg announces

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the Commons, has just told MPs that there will be a vote tomorrow on a way and means resolution relating to social care. He does not say it explicitly, but this means a vote on the tax increase just announced by the PM.

A ways and means resolution is a procedure to approve a new tax.

Updated

IFS says Johnson's national insurance increase will take tax burden to highest-ever sustained level

These are from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the tax and spending thinktank.

Paul Johnson, director of the IFS, told BBC Radio 4’s The World at One that this should really be seen as a 2.5% national insurance hike, and that this was “the biggest tax rising year in many decades”. He explained:

We keep saying 1.25% – it is really 2.5%. It is one-and-a-quarter from the employer on every £100 you earn, it is one-and-a-quarter from the employee – you add that up and it is two-and-a-half per cent. It is really a 2.5% tax rise on earnings.

This is £12bn on top of £25bn of tax rises in the budget – this must be the biggest tax rising year in many decades.

Updated

These are from Torsten Bell, head of the Resolution Foundation thinktank, on today’s announcement from Johnson.

Bell has also posted a useful thread on the PM’s statement with more detail, starting here.

Back in the Commons Boris Johnson claims that his plans are bringing “the magic of averages to the rescue of millions”. He is referring to social insurance, and the way pooling risk can reduce the liability to an individual.

Johnson was quoting Churchill, who used the phrase to describe the National Insurance Act of 1911.

Sunak launches spending review and confirms budget to be held on 27 October

Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, has formally announced the start of the spending review. It will decide government spending priorities for the three years starting from 2022-23, and the outcome will be announced on Wednesday 27 October, alongside an autumn budget.

The Treasury has published more details here, and here is the letter (pdf) that Sunak has sent to cabinet colleagues setting out his priorities for the spending review.

Updated

Back in the Commons, in response to a question from Labour’s Ben Bradshaw, Boris Johnson again criticises the opposition for not having its own proposal. “A plan beats no plan,” he says.

The government has now published a policy document giving more details of the plans announced by the PM. It runs to 33 pages and it is here (pdf).

Johnson claims Brexit is leading to pay rises in low-wage sectors

Back in the Commons Boris Johnson told MPs a few minutes ago that wages are now going up in low-income occupations “in exactly the way that those of us who campaigned for Brexit hoped”.

(My colleague Larry Elliott made the same argument in a recent column.)

A typical higher rate taxpayer earning £67,100 - in the top 15% of earners - will pay an extra £715 per year under these plans, according to No 10. A post earlier said it was £7.15 a week. That was a result of a misunderstanding at the briefing, but the earlier post has now been corrected. See 12.50pm.

Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, congratulates Johnson on delivering on his promise to reform care. He stresses the importance of integrating health and social care.

His intervention prompts a lot of jeering from the opposition.

Johnson thanks Hancock, and says he played a “major part” in developing the plans when he was in office.

Sir Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, says he has been a carer for most of his life. He says the Tories failed to implement the Lib Dem plan legislated for in 2014. But there is no plan here to fill vacancies in the care sector, or to help disabled adults. The PM “doesn’t have a clue about fairness”, he says.

Johnson says Davey is calling for more funding, but then attacking him for providing it.

And he says the plan will help all adults needing care.

Jon Trickett (Lab) says the cap will be Johnson’s poll tax. He says in his constituency the average home is worth £130,000; in Johnson’s it is worth £500,000. He says that means the new rules will protect much bigger inheritances in constituencies like Johnson’s.

Dame Margaret Hodge (Lab) says this is the least progressive option available for raising the money. It is unfair between individuals, unfair between generations and unfair between assets and income. Why did the PM not raise income tax or capital gains tax, or try a dividend tax?

Johnson says other taxes would not have raised enough.

Andrea Leadsom (Con) says millions of people concerned about the costs of social care will be relieved by this announcement.

Ian Blackford, the SNP leader at Westminster, tells Johnson to “keep his mitts off” Scotland’s health service.

He says the Tories are taxing Scottish workers twice, and forcing them to pay for English social care.

Johnson says the NHS is a UK institution. There is a “massive union dividend” he says because Scotland will get more money too.

Jeremy Hunt, the former health secretary, and Johnson’s main opponent in the 2019 Tory leadership contest, praises the PM for “biting the bullet on this intractable issue”.

In response to Starmer, Johnson accuses Labour of having no plan of its own. He says it is “deeply irresponsible” of Starmer to come to the Commons without his own proposals.

Sir Keir Starmer is responding to Johnson.

He says Johnson cannot claim the problems are all due to Covid. The Conservatives have been in power for a decade, he says, and if 30,000 hospital beds were occupied by people who should have been care homes at the start of the pandemic, they were responsible, he says.

He asks if the government is still committed to meeting the 18-week waiting target.

He asks the PM to give a guarantee that no one will have to sell their home under the government’s plan.

He says there are no plans to help the low paid in social care, no plan for adults with disabilities, and no plan to improve pay and conditions.

And in response to Tory heckling, he says his sister is a poorly paid care worker, and so he knows what he is talking about.

Wealthier people should be paying much more, including from taxes on dividends and property, he says.

No 10 summary of the plans

Here is a summary of the plans, based on an embargoed briefing from No 10 given earlier.

  • The NHS is getting £36bn over the next three years “to fund the biggest catch-up programme in the NHS’s history, tackling the Covid backlogs”. Adult social care will be reformed to stop people facing “unpredictable and catastrophic costs”. And health and social care will be brought closer.

How it is funded

  • A new UK-wide 1.25% “health and social care levy” will come in from April 2022, based on national insurance contributions. It will be paid by working adults, including people over the state pension age (unlike normal national insurance, which is not paid by pensioners).
  • Initially from April 2022 national insurance contributions rates will go up by 1.25%. But from April 2023, once tax systems have been updated, the levy will be separated, so that the levy will appear as a separate line on pay slips. At this point working adults above state pension age will start contributing.

How much will people pay

  • The system is progressive, No 10 says. Those who earn more will pay more, A typical basic rate taxpayer earning £24,100 will pay £180 a year, or £3.46 per week. A typical higher rate taxpayer earning £67,100 - in the top 15% of earners - will pay £715 a year.
  • Additional rate tax payers (those paying the highest rate) will contribute 20% of the revenue, even though they are just 2% of taxpayers.
  • Higher rate taxpayers - 14% of the total - will pay half the revenue.
  • 6.2 million people earning less than £9,568 will not have to pay.
  • Dividend tax is going up too by 1.25%, to ensure people who receive income through dividends make the same contribution. These people are more likely to be higher earners.
  • Big businesses will pay the most of the extra revenue coming from the increase to employers NICs, with 70% of the money coming from the biggest 1% of employers - those with more than 250 employees.
  • 40% of all businesses (mostly small business) will not have to pay anything extra.
  • No 10 says that, because employers also contribute, raising NICs is fairer than raising income tax. To raise this money from income tax, income tax would have to go up by 2%. A typical basic rate taxpayer would pay around £230 a year, instead of £180. For a higher rate taxpayer, that would be £1,090 instead of £750.

International precedents

  • No 10 says France, Germany and Japan have all increased social security contributions to fund social care.

Support for the NHS

  • The NHS will get an extra £12bn a year for investment in frontline care over the next three years, No 10 says.
  • The new funding is expected to fund an extra 9 million checks, scans and operations.
  • By 2023-24 activity levels in the NHS will be 110% of what was planned.

Reforms to adult social care

  • Currently anyone with assets over £23,250 has to pay their care costs in full. That means around one in seven people pay more than £100,000. From October 2023 the system will change and anyone with assets worth less than £20,000 will have their care costs fully covered by the government. Anyone with assets between £20,000 and £100,000 will be expected to contribute to the cost of care, but will also be eligible for state support covering some of the costs. This support will be means tested.
  • No one will ever have to pay more than £86,000 for care in their lifetime - roughly equivalent to three years of care.
  • The system will be made fairer, so that people who pay for their own care do not have to pay more than state-funded individuals for equivalent care.
  • The NHS and the care system will also be brought closer together.

Devolved governments

  • Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will get an extra £2.2bn in health and social care spending as a result of the levy. No 10 says there is “a clear union dividend from this policy”.

UPDATE: A paragraph above originally said a typical higher rate taxpayer earning £67,100 - in the top 15% of earners - would pay £7.15 a week under the plans. But that was based on a misunderstanding at the briefing. The figure is £715 per year.

Updated

Here is my colleague Heather Stewart’s story about the plan.

Johnson confirms he is breaking Tory manifesto promise

Johnson says no Conservative ever wants to raise taxes.

And he admits he is breaking a manifesto promise. “Yes, I accept that this breaks our manifesto commitment,” he says.

But he says no one foresaw a global pandemic.

Updated

Johnson insists health reform and social care reform have to go together.

You can’t fix the Covid backlogs without giving the NHS the money it needs, and you can’t fix the NHS without fixing social care, you can’t fix social care without removing the fear of losing everything to pay for social care, and you can’t fix health and social care without long-term reform.

Updated

Johnson says assets cap below which people get help paying for social care to be raised to £100,000

Johnson says it is not enough to put more money in.

The system needs to be changed too, he says.

When the Covid crisis broke, there were 30,000 people in hospital who could have been treated better elsewhere, he says.

He says people were in hospital because they or their relatives were worried about the cost of care in a residential home.

The fear that a condition like dementia could lead to the total liquidation of their assets, and their home, affects millions, he says.

He says the insurance system cannot address this, because demand would be too low to ensure insurance could be available at an affordable price.

He says the government will put a limit on the amount people need to pay.

And it will work with the industry to encourage it to provide insurance for care costs, he says.

  • People with assets worth less than £20,000 will not have to pay for their social care, he says.
  • People with assets worth between £20,000 and £100,000 will be eligible for some means-tested support, he says.

Johnson says a white paper on integrating health and social care will be published later this year.

Updated

Johnson says highest earning 14% will pay around half the total revenue from new levy

Johnson says people want to know why income tax is not being increased instead.

But it is not paid by business, he says. So if income tax were increased, it would be double the rate.

And capital gains tax in total raises less than the sum this new levy will raise, he says.

Johnson says the highest earning 14% will pay around half the revenue from the levy.

Johnson confirms new 1.25% health and social care levy being introduced

Johnson says the government will put more money into the NHS. But it will also fix the long-term problems of social care.

And it would be wrong to say the government can pay for this without explaining how it can fund this, he says.

He says from next April there will be a new 1.25% health and social care levy, hypothecated by law.

It will not pay for pay awards for middle management. It will go straight to the frontline, he says.

Boris Johnson is opening his statement.

He says Covid has placed “massive pressures on our NHS”.

Thousands of people did not come forward for treatment. These are people who know - your aunt, your neighbour, your colleague at work, he says.

The government needs to go beyond the record funding for the NHS already provided, he says.

This is from Nick Macpherson, a former Treasury permanent secretary.

Boris Johnson's Commons statement on social care

Boris Johnson will be starting his Commons statement on social care within the next few minutes.

This is from ITV’s Paul Brand.

This is from Chris Thomas, a health and care expert at the IPPR thinktank, on the PM’s latest Twitter thread. (See 11.44am.)

This is from my colleague Heather Stewart.

Boris Johnson (or, to be more accurate, the person who manages his Twitter account), has posted four tweets this morning about the announcement he will make at 12.30pm. They imply the national insurance increase is primarily needed to rescue the NHS after Covid, in line with the message being given out by Downing Street last night. (See 9.48am.)

At the Downing Street briefing the prime minister’s spokesman also denied that the government is planning a “firebreak” lockdown in October. (See 10.42am.) But the spokesman gave a statement that also implied that contingency plans for such an outcome might well be in the filing cabinet. He said:

No, it is not true that the government is planning a lockdown or firebreak around the October half-term ...

We have retained contingency plans as part of responsible planning for a range of scenarios, but these kind of measures would only be reintroduced as a last resort to prevent unsustainable pressure on our NHS.

I think we’ve been clear throughout that we will take action, and indeed we have done when necessary to protect our NHS.

But under the previous occasions when that action has been required, we have been without the significant defences that our vaccination programme provides us - we’re now in a much different phase.

The spokesman seemed to be making a distinction between “planning” something (ie, wanting or expecting it to happen) and having plans for something (as a last resort, which is what governments should be doing).

We are getting three Commons statements today, starting at 12.30pm; from Boris Johnson, then Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of the Commons, then Thérèse Coffey, the work and pensions secretary.

Johnson’s will cover social care. We do not know yet what Rees-Mogg will say, but there has been speculation that Downing Street will schedule a vote on social care this week, and that is the sort of thing Rees-Mogg would need to announce to MPs in a statement. The Telegraph’s Ben Riley-Smith posted this on Twitter last night.

We expect Coffey will use her statement to confirm that the pension triple lock is being abandoned this year.

No 10 says cabinet agreed to Johnson's plans for social care

Downing Street says ministers backed Boris Johnson’s plans for social care at this morning’s cabinet. At the lobby briefing the prime minister’s spokesman told journalists:

The cabinet agreed to the proposals set out. There was strong agreement that this is a long-standing issue, particularly on the social care side, which had been ducked for too long and which needed to be addressed.

Given that very few key decisions actually get taken in cabinet these days (it rubber stamps decisions thrashed out by smaller groups elsewhere), it is not surprising that Johnson got them to sign off on what he is going to announce.

But this statement does suggest there was some dissent. Agreeing that social care is “a long-standing issue ... which had been ducked for too long and which [needs] to be addressed” is not the same as saying that Johnson’s plan for addressing it is the right one.

10 Downing Street
10 Downing Street. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA

Updated

Two former Conservative party leaders have expressed strong reservations about Boris Johnson’s plans for social care. The Telegraph quotes Iain Duncan Smith saying the plans are a “sham” because they are not linked to proposals to fundamentally reform the way social care is delivered.

And William Hague has used his column in the Times (paywall) to say that breaking a manifesto promise is extremely risky. He says:

The political downsides of being seen to go back on such a promise are very great: loss of credibility when making future election commitments, a blurring of the distinction between Tory and Labour philosophies, a recruiting cry for fringe parties on the right, and an impression given to the world that the UK is heading for higher taxes still. That adds up to an extremely high price, and if I was still around in the cabinet I would be on the very reluctant end of the argument about funding social care through a tax rise seen as breaking an election promise ...

Pragmatic Tories understand that the challenges of demography, levelling up and climate change mean a more active state. But that should not mean an ever-more expensive one. The government has between now and the next election to show that it is defined by leading the country into becoming an innovative, highly educated economy that can pay for good public health without continuing tax rises. If it can’t do that, it will be defined instead by the events of this week.

But Hague does not seem 100% sure that this policy will turn out to be a mistake. He qualifies his assessment by saying that Johnson is “an election-winning marvel with an extraordinary instinct for what he can get away with”.

According to government briefing, the £10bn or more raised by the proposed national insurance increase will be at first be spend mostly on supporting the NHS, before later being used to make social care more generous. We don’t have details, and this has not been confirmed on the record, but this is what the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg reported last night.

I’m told the cash raised, potentially over £12bn, will be ring-fenced somehow, targeted initially at the health service itself then will switch to social care after three years.

But is this plausible? Three other political editors have their doubts.

From the FT’s George Parker

From the Sun’s Harry Cole

From the Mirror’s Pippa Crerar

Government denies planning for 'firebreak' lockdown in October

The Department for Education has gone further than Nadhim Zahawi, the health minister (see 10.13am), and explicitly denied that the government is planning a “firebreak” lockdown around the time of the autumn half term. A report for the i claims the government is making contingency plans for a lockdown of this kind if hospitalisations continue at their current rate.

Updated

Last night the Department of Health and Social Care announced an extra £5.4bn for the NHS in England over the next six months - and around £6bn for the NHS across the whole of the UK over that period.

In a joint statement, NHS Confederation and NHS Providers, which both represent hospitals and other NHS organisations, have welcomed the news, but said an extra £10bn a year over the next three years will still be needed. They said:

The NHS has been desperately seeking clarity on its budget for the second half of the year and the government has now delivered that certainty with this £5.4 billion announcement. The NHS can now get on with the huge task it has ahead of what we anticipate will be one of the most challenging winters the service has ever faced. The task for the government now is to follow up in its spending review with the extra £10 billion a year the NHS will need over the next three years to avoid patient services from being cut.

In an interview with Times Radio, Saffron Cordery, deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, also said that, although social care reform was necessary, she was concerned that all the comment so far has been about funding, not about how care is delivered. She explained:

One of my fears about the announcements that are being made at the moment is that we’re talking about how that’s going to be funded but what we haven’t seen at all is the plans for what that reform of social care will look like.

We absolutely know that social care needs more money, but we’ve got to make sure that we’re putting that money in the right place, just as we do in the NHS. So whilst the focus is always on the money, let’s think about how that’s going to be used.

John Swinney, Scotland’s deputy first minister, has said he is self-isolating after coming into contact with someone with Covid. He posted this on Twitter last night.

Zahawi says he has not seen any plans for possible October 'firebreak' lockdown

In an interview with BBC Breakfast this morning Nadhim Zahawi, the vaccine deployment minister, was asked about a report in the i saying the government had drawn up plans for an October “firebreak” lockdown if Covid hospitalisations continue to rise. “I haven’t seen any plans around this,” Zahawi said.

Updated

Nadhim Zahawi ‘not comfortable’ with breaking manifesto promises

As my colleague Jamie Grierson reports, in his interviews this morning Nadhim Zahawi, the vaccine deployment minister, also said that he was “not comfortable with breaking any manifesto promises”.

Sajid Javid, the health secretary (right), and Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, arriving for this morning’s cabinet at No 10, where details of the social care plan were being unveiled. It is the first in-person cabinet meeting in Downing Street since last March.
Sajid Javid, the health secretary (right), and Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, arriving for this morning’s cabinet at No 10, where details of the social care plan were being unveiled. It is the first in-person cabinet meeting in Downing Street since last March. Photograph: Tayfun Salcı/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock

Johnson cites NHS Covid crisis as reason for national insurance rising in breach of manifesto pledge

Good morning. Boris Johnson will today unveil his long-promised plans to reform social care, first to MPs in a statement to the Commons and then to the public directly at a press conference. It is a huge political challenge, for two obvious reasons.

First, social care is a problem that politicians of all parties have shelved for more than a decade – for the straightforward reason that improving the system will cost huge sums of money, and it is hard to persuade the public to back higher taxes.

This would be a challenge for any prime minister, but Johnson faces an added problem that he fought an election promising not to put up income tax, national insurance or VAT, despite being warned that the social care reform he promised would be impossible without at least one of these taxes going up. Now he is set to break that promise.

Of course, Johnson has plenty of experience of not honouring the pledges he has made to people but until now this behaviour has not harmed his ascent to the top of British politics. But at the weekend Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the Commons, reminded Johnson that George Bush lost the US presidency after breaking a promise not to put up taxes, and so potentially what Johnson is doing today is perilous.

But it doesn’t have to be. If Johnson can persuade the public that his move is justified, this does not have to be another “read my lips” debacle. And overnight we saw the first glimpse of the argument that Johnson will use to justify his flagrant manifesto-busting: Johnson is using the NHS Covid emergency to justify national insurance going up now.

The government is arguing that the £10bn or so raised by the national insurance rise will initially be used primarily to rescue the NHS from the crisis caused by Covid, before it primarily starts funding better social care (after the next election, when the 2019 manifesto promise is no longer operable). In a No 10 press statement issued overnight about today’s announcement, eight of the 10 paragraphs were about the NHS, not social care. And Johnson was quoted as saying:

The NHS is the pride of our United Kingdom, but it has been put under enormous strain by the pandemic. We cannot expect it to recover alone.

We must act now to ensure the health and care system has the long-term funding it needs to continue fighting Covid and start tackling the backlogs, and end the injustice of catastrophic costs for social care.

My government will not duck the tough decisions needed to get NHS patients the treatment they need and to fix our broken social care system.

And this morning Nadhim Zahawi, the vaccine deployment minister, used a similar line in interviews. Asked on the Today programme if Johnson was wrong when he told voters in 2019 that he would be able to reform social care without raising taxes, Zahawi replied: “Well, first of all, there was no pandemic [in 2019], if you recall. This is an unprecedented time for the whole world, and for the United Kingdom.”

Will this work? Who knows, but the NHS is one cause that can definitely persuade British voters to support higher taxes, as Gordon Brown discovered in 2002. When he put up national insurance to raise more money for health, the move was wildly popular (although Brown, unlike Johnson, had spend more than a year trying to shift public opinion on this issue, including by commissioning the banker Derek Wanless to produce a report explaining why the money was needed). It is not inconceivable that Johnson could break two of his main manifesto promises (on national insurance and on the pension triple lock, also expected to be breached today), and yet see his popularity go up.

Here is the agenda for the day.

8.30am: Boris Johnson chairs cabinet, where ministers are learning full details of the plans for social care.

11.30am: Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, takes questions in the Commons.

After 12.30pm: Johnson makes a statement to MPs about his social care plan.

After 2pm: MPs debate the second reading of the elections bill.

2.30pm: Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, unveils her programme for government in the Scottish parliament.

Late afternoon: Johnson holds a press conference with Sunak and Sajid Javid, the health secretary.

Today I will be mostly focusing on the social care announcement. For Covid coverage, do read our global coronavirus live blog.

I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.

If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

Alternatively, you can email me at andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com

Updated

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