Afternoon summary
- MPs are set to approve Boris Johnson’s plan for a £12bn health and social care levy after Conservative backbenchers rallied behind the prime minister. Despite reports at the weekend suggesting Johnson was facing a significant rebellion, Johnson got a warm reception from his MPs at PMQs and in the debate on the plan, which will continue until 7pm, only a handful of Tories have expressed reservations about the tax hike. Jake Berry, chair of the Northern Research Group, which represents Tory MPs from the north of England, said he would not be supporting the government because the proposals could be damaging to people in the north. (See 2.54pm). Steve Baker, another former minister, said he would not be voting with the government either because it was acting like a Labour administration. (See 4.29pm.) Dehenna Davison has also said she would not vote for the government motion because she was worried about the plans favouring the wealthy. This is from Eleni Courea from the Times.
Dehenna Davison says she will be abstaining over issues with the "ultra-wealthy having the cost of their social care capped" and concerns with raising NI
— Eleni Courea (@EleniCourea) September 8, 2021
She said MPs have not had enough time to consider the proposals or consult constituents
- Labour has said it is voting against the government’s plans because it says the new levy will not fix social care and will not be funded fairly. The shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, made the case against the plans in a well-received Commons speech. (See 2.34pm.) She did not offer an alternative plan for raising money for social care. But she did hint that the party would like to raise more through taxes on wealth or property. In an interview with the PM programme, when asked about this, she said national insurance only taxed one form of income. She went on:
There are other forms of income, through stocks and shares and properties. If you take, for example, somebody has got a portfolio of buy-to-let properties, under what the government announced yesterday and what we’re voting on this evening, they won’t pay a penny more in tax. And yet their tenants who go out and earn a wage will be paying more. That’s not right.
That is all from me for today. But our coronavirus coverage continues on our global live blog. It’s here.
In his speech at the start of the Commons debate Jesse Norman, the Treasury minister, cited a Resolution Foundation report (pdf) as evidence that the care plans would help people living in the north. He quoted it as saying: “The increased generosity of the means-test that will have relatively more impact in lower wealth regions.” (See 2.04pm.)
Here is another passage from the report explaining this point.
Only 29 per cent of individuals aged 70 and above living in the north-east have sufficient eligible assets that they might receive no state support with their social care costs, compared to almost half (46 per cent) in the south west.
And here is a chart illustrating this point.
But the report also says that, in other respects, the plans favour people living in the south. It says:
The cap [the £86,000 maximum any one person will supposedly have to spend on social care] will offer most protection to those living in high-wealth parts of England. This is not just because of the obvious reason that a cap set in cash terms offers far more protection to those with higher-value assets to lose. The way in which care costs are likely to be calculated will also mean that those in more expensive areas will hit the cap more often (and therefore benefit more from the policy existing versus the status quo of no cap). Whether or not you have reached the cap will be calculated based on the normal spend required to receive the care you are assessed as needing in your local authority, not what you actually spend (another risk to the policy living up to its billing). But the costs of delivering care are significantly higher in some areas than others, as Figure 7 [see below] shows. The result is that those in the south are not only likely to have more assets that will be protected by the cap, but they are much more likely to hit it too, than those in the north or Midlands (assuming an equal distribution of the chance of needing care).
Updated
This is from my colleague Rafael Behr on the Keir Starmer v Boris Johnson dynamic.
One Westminster dynamic observable over last 24 hours is that Labour's effectiveness as opposition is pegged to Johnson's standing with his own MPs. Starmer is a weak matador who relies very heavily on Tory picadors to weaken the bull. They didn't ride out on social care levy.
— Rafael Behr (@rafaelbehr) September 8, 2021
The Conservative MP Sir Roger Gale has told Times Radio that he will be abstaining in the vote tonight because of his concern about the social care plans, the Times’ Tom Newton Dunn reports.
Tory MP Roger Gale tells @TimesRadio he will abstain on the social care vote instead of voting against, like many of the rebels. "The Prime Minister has grasped the nettle, when many others didn't. But I wish he'd pull it up by the roots, not just by the top".
— Tom Newton Dunn (@tnewtondunn) September 8, 2021
The UK has recorded 191 further coronavirus deaths and 38,975 new Covid cases, according to the latest update on the government’s dashboard. The total number of deaths over the past seven days is up 26.1% on the total for the previous week, and cases are up 15.3% week on week.
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Dominic Cummings, the PM’s former chief adviser and now one of his fiercest critics, has restated his criticism of the plan to raise national insurance to fund health and social care.
Tell your friends: the Tories are making the young - who can't get a house & working for average/below average income, already screwed by a decade of hapless Tory government - to work harder to subsidise older richer people. They promised to do the opposite #RegimeChange
— Dominic Cummings (@Dominic2306) September 8, 2021
Photograph: Guy Bell/Rex/Shutterstock
Updated
Back in the Commons Steve Baker, the Conservative former minister, is speaking now about the plan for a £12bn health and social care levy. He says the problem is that it is what Labour would be doing. Debt is too high, he says. Sooner or later we will find the state cannot afford the promises it is making to older people.
He says this is the beginning of a generational crisis. The country can now no longer afford the welfare promises made to citizens, he says. Other countries face the same problem. “We are in a dreadful position,” he says.
He says there will be only one party that can address this: the Conservative party.
He says they will have to rediscover their confidence as free-market Conservatives.
We’re going to have to rediscover the radical reforming zeal of the 2010 parliament and the big society and show people that we can secure a bright and prosperous and free future, which provides for their needs in old age, but do it without every time there’s a squeeze on the public finances coming back for higher taxes. Because down that road, there is ruin. We all know that eventually, as a socialist, you run out of other people’s money.
He will not be able to vote with the government tonight, he says.
Updated
Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, has said he got Marcus Rashford muddled with Maro Itoje because he had mixed up the two issues the men had been campaigning on, which both came up in his Evening Standard interview. (See 1.28pm.) Williamson said:
Towards the end of a wide-ranging interview in which I talked about both the laptops and school meals campaigns, I conflated the issues and made a genuine mistake. We corrected this with the journalist before publication of the story.
I have huge respect for both Marcus Rashford and Maro Itoje who run effective and inspiring campaigns.
It would have been easy to include an apology in the statement, but Williamson chose not to.
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Vaccine passports 'reasonable response to very difficult situation', says Sturgeon
Nicola Sturgeon has told MSPs that her government’s controversial proposals for vaccine passports are “a reasonable response to a very difficult situation, and much more proportionate than any likely alternatives”, ahead of a debate on the plans in Holyrood tomorrow.
Opposition parties have raised concerns that the plans to require vaccine certification for entry to nightclubs and large-scale gatherings such as music festivals and football matches threaten civil liberties and risk increasing vaccine hesitancy.
The Scottish Greens are under particular scrutiny having previously described vaccine passports as “a real danger to generational injustice”. Since signing their cooperation deal with the Scottish government they are bound by collective responsibility on the issue.
During her Covid statement to the Scottish parliament, Sturgeon said it was important to bear in mind that Scotland was far from alone in considering the scheme. She said:
Covid certification has already been introduced by several other governments – of different political persuasions – in countries across Europe. Indeed, many countries have already gone much further than we are proposing.
Sturgeon also said that, although infection levels were showing welcome signs of stabilisation, they remained “far too high” across the country, with hospital occupancy rising sharply.
She added that recent data gave her hope that “we can turn the corner through continued care and caution and stringent compliance with existing mitigations and without having to re-introduce any tighter restrictions”.
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Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader, has said he supports the proposal from his fellow leftwinger Richard Burgon for the national insurance increase to be replaced by a wealth tax on people with assets worth more than £5m. (See 11.52am.)
I support @richardburgon 's amendment to scrap the Tory National Insurance hikes.
— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) September 8, 2021
Instead, there should be a Wealth Tax on the super-rich - those with assets over £5m.
This could fund much-needed investment in our social services, including a National Care Service for all.
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Earlier in the Commons Conservative MPs urged the government to drop plans for vaccine passports after accusing a minister of talking “rubbish” and picking an “unnecessary fight” with them, PA Media reports. It says the vaccines minister, Nadhim Zahawi, also caused head-shaking among colleagues when he told MPs there would be “some essential services which will not need” people to show a Covid passport – heightening their fears over the government’s proposals.
The government has said it wants to ensure that, from the end of September, people attending nightclubs in England will need to show that they have been fully vaccinated.
In response to an urgent question on this, Zahawi told MPs:
The reason that we are moving forward on this is because, if you look at what has happened in other countries where nightclubs were opening and then shutting again, opening and shutting again, we want to avoid that disruption and maintain sectors that can add to people’s enjoyment of life and dance, as it did for the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster [Michael Gove].
That they can do so sustainably, the reason for the end of September ... is because by the end of September all 18-year-olds and above would have had the chance to have two doses.
It is not something we do lightly, it is something to allow us to transition this virus from pandemic to endemic status.
But William Wragg (Con) told Zahawi:
What a load of rubbish. I don’t believe [Zahawi] believes a word of what he’s just uttered because I remember him very persuasively stating my position – which we shared at the time – that this measure would be discriminatory and yet he’s sent to the dispatch box to defend the indefensible.
This is a needless fight that we seem prepared to have in this house over the issue, it’s completely unnecessary.
Updated
Tory Northern Research Group chair says he cannot vote for £12bn health and social care levy
Back in the Commons Jake Berry, the former minister who now chairs the Northern Research Group, which represents Tory MPs from the north of England, is speaking now.
Berry spoke out about the plans before the full details were published and, unlike some “rebel” Tories who have changed their tune, he is restating his objections.
He says he fears it could be “particularly damaging” for people living in the north. It will affect people on lower incomes, he says, and in the north property prices are lower, meaning they are more at risk of losing their homes.
His Tory colleague, Dehenna Davison, intervenes to suggest that the government should take account of regional disparities when setting the means-test thresholds for care. Berry says that is an excellent idea.
He also says he is concerned that the levy will become a permanent NHS tax. No party will be able to agree to take away money from the NHS, he says. And he says this will ultimately harm the Tories because we will never outbid the Labour Party in the arms race of an NHS tax”.
He says for these reasons he will not be supporting the government tonight.
(That does not necessarily mean he will vote against; he may just be abstaining.)
UPDATE: Here is an extract from Berry’s speech.
If it’s an NHS tax which will be hypothecated and listed on your payslip then call it that, don’t call it a health and social care tax because it’s to fund the NHS and when the time comes to move the money from the NHS over to health and social care, what government of any political hue is going to cut 12 billion from the NHS budget?
So if you create an NHS tax, you have an NHS tax forever, it will never go down, it can only go up. No party is ever going to stand at an election and say I’ve got a good idea, vote for me, I’ll cut the NHS tax.
So I just think there’s huge danger for us in creating such a hypothecated tax and having it on people’s payslips.
It is fundamentally un-Conservative and in the long term it will massively damage the prospects of our party because we will never outbid the Labour party in the arms race of an NHS tax and that’s why I don’t think this is the right way to do it ...
So I hope the government will take the opportunity to think again, and I’ll say this. I welcome the new money for the NHS but throwing other people’s money down a bottomless pit doesn’t become a good idea if you put the NHS logo next to it.
So if we are going to fund the NHS, if we are going to give more money, before you ask this house and us as MPs to approve it, show us the plan. We cannot measure the NHS by what goes into it, we have to measure it by what comes out of the other end and for those reasons with a heavy heart I won’t be supporting the government this evening.
Updated
UK decision on Covid vaccine boosters expected tomorrow
The UK’s vaccines watchdog is expected to decide tomorrow about a Covid booster vaccine programme, with ministers hopeful that approval for vaccinations for 12- to 15-year-olds could follow imminently, my colleagues Peter Walker and Rowena Mason report.
Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, ended her Commons speech with panto-style call-and-response routine summarising Labour’s objections to the £12bn health and social care levy.
Let’s get back to the key questions that need answering.
Will this plan deliver what it promised for our health and social care sectors? No.
Will it clear the NHS backlog this parliament? No. And the health secretary says no. (See 10.22am.)
Will it give social care the resources it needs for the next three years? No.
Is there a plan to reform social care? No.
Will it create more and better paid jobs in the economy? No.
Is it fair across the regions? No.
Will people be prevented from selling their homes to fund their care? No.
Will this tax bombshell help our economic recovery? No.
And is it the last tax increase in this parliament? No.
This whole thing is unravelling. No wonder that ministers are in a desperate rush to get it through.
It was a very good speech, which had a lot more clarity and passion than Sir Keir Starmer’s two contributions on this issue yesterday and today.
Updated
Reeves says there are alternatives to the way the government is raising money.
The government’s plan will lead to a graduate on an entry level salary paying effectively a marginal rate of tax of almost 50%. (That includes the impact of having to repay a graduate loan.)
She contrasts that with Amazon. Yesterday it reported paying just £3.8m more in corporation tax than it had in 2019, even though its sales were up by almost £2bn.
She says politics is about choices. The chancellor wants people to think that there are not alternative ways of raising the money, but there are, she says.
UPDATE: Reeves said:
This government are choosing to tax ordinary working-class people. Labour would ask those with the broadest shoulders—the wealthiest in our communities—to pay more ...
Who has been shielded by the chancellor? Which types of income will be paying no additional tax after today? They include those who get their income from financial assets, stocks and shares, sales of property, pension income, annuity income, interest income, property rental income and inheritance income ... Some 95% of the revenue the government plan to raise from this tax bombshell comes from employment. What a contrast.
Updated
Sir Keir Starmer’s spokesman has confirmed that Labour will vote against the government’s resolution tonight. He said:
The reason why we’re voting against the proposals is because they don’t fix social care, they won’t clear the backlog and it’s an unfair tax rise.
Asked if that meant Labour would be vulnerable to claims it was voting against an extra £36bn for health and social care, he replied:
No, for two reasons: when it comes to what people will experience, by the next general election the government - as Boris Johnson admitted when Keir Starmer asked him today - will not have cleared the backlog when it comes to the NHS.
And the guarantee that was in the manifesto that you won’t have to pay for care wasn’t committed to by the prime minister.
Those are the two key tests that there are as to whether this is something that should be supported and on that basis we are very clear that it is not something that we will be supporting tonight.
Jesse Norman intervenes, and tells Reeves that Labour has not got a plan. He also quotes from the Resolution Foundation’s analysis (pdf) of the plan, which said: “The increased generosity of the means-test that will have relatively more impact in lower wealth regions.”
Reeves responds by asking who someone with a home worth £186,000 would be able to find the £86,000 they might need to pay for care costs under the PM’s plans without selling their home.
Labour’s Chris Bryant intervenes to back Reeves. He says in his Rhondda constituency in south Wales 70% of people own their own home. But the average house is worth £98,000, he says.
For my constituents who are going to be asked - on lower than average wages in the country - to contribute more in national insurance, is it not manifestly unfair that they will still have to find £86,000 and the only place they are going to find it is out of £98,000, so as to fund millionaires in the south-east of England being able to pass on the whole of their inheritance to their children?
Updated
£12bn health and care levy won't fix social care, and not funded fairly, says Labour's Rachel Reeves
In the Commons Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, is opening for Labour. While Jesse Norman delivered a low-key, largely technical speech, Reeves starts at full throttle, in what is turning into a much more political broadside.
She says there are two tests for the package funded yesterday.
First, does it fix social care? Second, is it funded fairly? And the answer to both those questions is no.
It is a broken promise, it is unfair, and it is a tax on jobs.
In his speech opening the debate Jesse Norman, the Treasury minister, said the £12bn health and social care levy was a profoundly conservative measures because it was providing for future generations, without increasing borrowing.
MPs debate £12bn health and social care levy
MPs are now debating the government’s motion approving the £12bn health and social care levy.
Nigel Evans, the deputy speaker, says the Labour amendment has been selected. That is the one saying the resolution should be passed conditional on the government publishing an impact assessment showing how it will impact on different income groups and regions. (See 11.52am.)
Jesse Norman, a junior Treasury minister, is opening the debate for the government. For something this important, you would normally expect a cabinet minister to take the lead. But ministers are now very comfortable of winning, and the fact that Norman has been put up suggests the whips are not anticipating much trouble.
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Gavin Williamson branded 'appalling' after confusing Marcus Rashford with Maro Itoje
Gavin Williamson said he had met England footballer Marcus Rashford online when he had in fact met rugby player Maro Itoje, the Evening Standard has reported.
The paper includes the revelation in an interview with Williamson by Susannah Butter. She writes:
Many of his critics have been high profile, including Marcus Rashford who called for an urgent review of free school meals. Has he met the footballer? “We met over Zoom and he seemed incredibly engaged, compassionate and charming but then he had to shoot off. I didn’t want to be the one that was holding him back from his training.” Williamson goes on to talk about how at one stage during the pandemic he was scouring the globe for laptops to give to children who were falling behind. Later Williamson’s team tell me he actually met the rugby player Maro Itoje, who campaigned to bridge the digital divide, not Rashford. Rashford’s spokesperson confirms that he has never had any direct communication with Williamson, although the minister did have a call with Itoje about equal access to education during the pandemic.
David Lammy, the shadow justice secretary, has said that Williamson’s apparent failure to be able to tell the difference between two black sportsmen is “appalling”.
This is appalling.@GavinWilliamson what was it about @maroitoje that made you mistake him for @MarcusRashford?
— David Lammy (@DavidLammy) September 8, 2021
You must be the most ignorant, clueless and incapable Education Secretary in the UK's history. https://t.co/DaXpGPBzWq
And this is Rashford’s response.
Accent could have been a giveaway 🤣 https://t.co/CO2oQjiZZ6
— Marcus Rashford MBE (@MarcusRashford) September 8, 2021
Updated
PMQs - Snap verdict
Boris Johnson quite comfortably had the best of that encounter. Being back in a crowded House of Commons helped (the Tory backbenchers were cheering quite a lot, and that always serves to buoy a minister at the dispatch box), but mostly it was because Johnson came across as someone still flabbergasted by how well his £12bn manifesto-busting tax increase seems to have landed. Sir Keir Starmer was better than he was in the chamber yesterday, but Labour’s response remains unfocused and unpersuasive.
Starmer started by raising an issue that had Sajid Javid rattled when it came up on the Today programme this morning: the failure of the plan announced yesterday to ensure that no one will have to sell their home to pay for social care. (See 10.22am.) It is a key topic because, until yesterday, about the only specific thing Johnson would say about his thinking on social care was that he wanted to stop people having to sell the family home and, as Starmer pointed out, the new plans will not achieve that for people who do not have a spare £86,000 to hand in cash, on top of the family home. So far, though, this drawback with the plan does not seem to have resonated widely with the media. Partly that’s because there are mechanisms available to ensure that, even if people have to sell the family home to pay for care, they do not necessarily have to move out of it while they are alive. And partly, perhaps, it is because people may have assumed (again) that Johnson’s promise was unrealistic in the first place.
Yesterday Starmer was criticising the Tories for no longer being the party of low tax. Given that Labour itself is not a low-tax party, this was problematic, and today he was focusing more on another dividing line: he criticised Johnson for penalising working people with his tax plans, saying Labour would tax those with the “broadest shoulders” instead. Given that the Resolution Foundation, a thinktank not hostile to Labour, says the national insurance increase is “progressive”, this argument is questionable, but it exposes a more fundamental weakness in Starmer’s position. He ended his exchanges by saying he was facing “the same old Tory party”, yet it is obvious that Johnson’s brand of Conservatism is not the same as the austerity model of 10 years ago. It was reminiscent of John Major’s doomed attempt to depict Tony Blair as an old-style socialist. In politics, as in all other forms of conflict, to beat the enemy, you need to understand them first.
It would also help to have a clearer alternative offer. Starmer probably does not need a fully-costed policy blueprint, but he does need something more than a vague intention to fund social care with higher taxes for the wealthy if he is going to convince voters that Labour is more credible on this issue. Johnson’s line about at least having a policy, unlike the opposition, clearly strikes a chord. And at the moment he seems to be beating Labour on health - a remarkable achievement for a Conservative PM.
Judging by the cheering, Tory MPs sounded more happy with their leader’s performance than Labour’s did. This is not always a good guide to who has done best, but PMQs matters almost as much for what it can do to a leader’s reputation with the parliamentary party as it does for their reputation with the public at large, and this afternoon the Conservatives do seem to be in a much happier place.
Updated
Peter Bone (Con) says he is putting forward a private member’s bill saying asylum seekers coming from a safe country will have to return there. Will the PM back this?
Johnson says the government has its own bill that will ensure people coming to the country illegally are not treated in the same way as people coming to the country legally.
Gareth Thomas (Lab) says newly qualified graduates will face a marginal tax rate of almost 50% under the PM’s new plans. Isn’t this another example of the poor being asked to pay more so the rich pay less?
Johnson disagrees. He says the rich are paying more.
Wendy Chamberlain (Lib Dem) asks what practical support will be provided to EU citizens trying to stay in the UK.
Johnson says the EU settlement scheme has helped 6 million people. That is double the number expected.
Updated
Peter Kyle (Lab) asks Johnson if he can say Gavin Williamson is the right person to be education secretary.
Johnson says Williamson has done a heroic job in difficult circumstances. The job of teachers would have been much easier if Labour had said schools were safe.
James Gray (Con) asks the PM to join him in thanking volunteers for St John Ambulance.
Johnson says they do an astonishing job. And he urges people who have not yet had a Covid vaccine to get one now.
Neale Hanvey (Alba) asks what Johnson means when he says people should rise out of poverty through their own efforts.
Johnson says he wants to see a jobs-led recovery. He is proud to see wages rising by the highest rate for years.
Updated
Lee Anderson (Con) says migrants crossing the Channel should be sent straight back.
Johnson says human trafficking is a vile trade. The government is trying to stop it, he says.
Emma Lewell-Buck (Lab) says a constituent spent a long time getting through to the helpline for non-British nationals in Afghanistan. When the call was over, and they thought he had hung up, the constituent heard the person on the other end laughing, and saying they were having to lie to people.
Johnson says he will look into it.
Richard Drax (Con) invites the PM to visit Weymouth, so he can see why it needs better infrastructure.
Johnson says he can think of nothing better than a trip to Weymouth.
Johnson says the shortage of HGV drivers is affecting countries all over Europe.
Rob Roberts (the former Tory, who is now an independent) asks about the way planning rules are affecting small businesses in his community.
Johnson sums up some of the general things done to support small businesses.
Calls of ‘resign’ as Rob Roberts speaks in PMQs
— Anna Mikhailova (@AVMikhailova) September 8, 2021
Updated
Sir Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, says yesterday’s plan forgot “we” family carers. (He has a disabled child.) Carers have a lifetime of ideas to improve care. Why does the PM keep ignoring them, and take carers for granted?
Johnson says the country owes a huge debt to unpaid carers like Davey. He says his plans will help, because they will no longer have anxiety about relatives losing assets.
Ian Blackford, the SNP leader at Westminster, claims that Johnson is imposing a “regressive Tory poll tax” on Scotland.
He says the PM is “balancing the books on the backs of the poor and the young”.
Johnson says he is delighted that he is putting another £1.1bn into the NHS in Scotland. All the SNP can talk about is another referendum.
Blackford says Johnson should be ashamed of himself. Furlough is being cut, and universal credit is being cut. This is the return of the austerity agenda. It is austerity 2.0. Scotland deserves better, he says. There is no chance of a fair Covid recovery under this PM he says.
Johnson says when Labour put up national insurance to pay for the NHS, John Swinney, now Scotland’s deputy first minister, welcomed the move and said it was “progressive”. He tells Blackford he should get his story straight.
David Jones (Con) asks about the Northern Ireland protocol.
Johnson says the protocol, as applied by the EU, is not protecting the Good Friday agreement. He says we must sort it out.
Updated
Starmer asks what the PM would say to Rosie, a single mother working in a nursing home. She will lost £87 a month from the universal credit cut. She cannot get more shifts. What would the PM say to her? The government underfunded the NHS for years, and then it wasted money on vanity projects and dodgy deals. And it is giving tax deductions to the rich. It is the same old Tory party.
Johnson says he has every sympathy for Rosie. But what will help her is having a dynamic economy, he says. He says Starmer would have kept the UK in the European Medicines Agency, and he attacked the vaccine taskforce. If “Captain Hindsight” were still in charge, we would still be in lockdown, he says.
He ends with Tory MPs shouting “More”.
Keir Starmer accuses Boris Johnson of 'hammering working people' over tax rise for health and social care
Starmer says Johnson cannot even say that the tax rise will clear the NHS backlog.
Tax rises are not the only way the PM is making working people worse off. He says 2.5m working families will face a double whammy - the national insurance rise and the universal credit cut. Why is the PM hammering working people?
Johnson says Labour wants to scrap universal credit altogether.
He says for the first time since 2019, after years of stagnation, wages are rising. Labour believes in welfare, he says. He says he believes in higher wages and higher skills.
Updated
Starmer says Johnson used to say national insurance rises were regressive.
Will this plan clear the NHS backlog?
Johnson says at least he has a plan. He says he understands that the only way to fix the crisis in social care is to fix the problem with hospital backlogs too.
He says he thinks Starmer is saying Labour will vote against the plans.
Starmer says Johnson’s plan is for an unfair tax on working people. He says his plan is to ensure those with the broadest shoulders pay.
He says the Tories do not like this.
Johnson’s plans do not do what they claim, he says.
He says Johnson has failed the only test he set for himself on care in the manifesto.
He says a landlord will not pay more under these plans, but tenants will.
Care workers will not get a pay rise under this plan, but they will get a tax rise?
How is that fair?
Johnson says the IFS has confirmed this is a progressive measure. The top 20% of households will pay 40 times as much as the poorest 20%.
He says Liz Kendall, the shadow social care minister, backed a plan for social care in 2018 based on an increase to national insurance.
Starmer says Johnson did not say no one would have to sell their home.
He says people could have to pay £86,000 for care under the PM’s plan. How will they get that money without having to sell their home?
Johnson says his plans will allow the insurance industry to provide insurance for the costs of social care. He asks what Labour would do?
Sir Keir Starmer asks Johnson if he still stands by his promise to stop people having to sell their homes to pay for care.
Johnson says he is taking the tough decisions the country wants to see. He challenges Starmer to explain how he will vote tonight.
(Labour HQ weren’t saying when I asked earlier.)
Updated
Craig Mackinlay (Con) asks what he should say to people who will only get tepid heat from green-friendly radiators, and who will lose out from other zero-carbon measures.
Johnson says Mackinlay’s constituents should be optimistic about what technology will be able to achieve.
Updated
There are loud cheers for Boris Johnson from the Tories as he starts.
Mick Whitley (Lab) asks about food banks, and the government’s decision to end the £20 per week universal credit uplift. Will the PM admit scrapping this is wrong?
Johnson says he is proud of what the government has done in putting its arms around the British people.
After PMQs there is an urgent question on vaccine passports, followed by a 10-minute rule bill. That mean the debate on the £12bn health and social care levy will start around 1.30pm.
PMQs
PMQs is about to start.
Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.
Labour challenges government to explain how new £12bn levy will impact on poor
At 7pm tonight MPs will vote on the principle of the new £12m levy for health and social care. They are not voting on legislation, but instead on a ways and means resolution (a mechanism to approve new taxation) which says:
That provision may be made for, and in connection with, the following—
(a) the imposition of a tax on earnings and profits in respect of which national insurance contributions are payable, or would be payable if no restriction by reference to pensionable age were applicable, the proceeds of which are to be paid (together with any associated penalties or interest) to the Secretary of State towards the cost of health and social care but where expenses incurred in collecting the tax are to be deducted and paid instead into the Consolidated Fund, and
(b) increasing the rates of national insurance contributions for a temporary period ending when the tax becomes chargeable and applying the increases towards the cost of the National Health Service.
Sir Keir Starmer has said Labour is opposed to putting up national insurance to fund social care. Labour and the SNP have both tabled amendments to the resolution saying that before the new tax is implemented, the government should publish a distributional impact assessment showing how it will impact on different income groups and on different regions. An amendment has also been tabled by Richard Burgon and fellow Labour leftwingers saying the government should publish figures showing how the same sums could be raised by a wealth tax on people with assets worth more than £5m.
The amendments are available here (pdf).
Simon Hart, the Welsh secretary, has claimed that yesterday’s cabinet discussion on the £12bn tax hike for health and social care was “very constructive”. Ahead of the meeting some cabinet ministers briefed journalists unattributably to say they were unhappy with what was being proposed. And at the meeting Liz Truss, the international trade secretary, Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the Commons, and Lord Forst, the Brexit minister, reportedly spoke against the plans.
But at a briefing today Hart said:
First of all, having a meeting in person for first time with the cabinet met in the cabinet room around the cabinet table was a significant moment. I think it facilitated a really upbeat, positive, serious discussion about the proposals.
I am sorry to report it was a very constructive meeting with plenty of goodwill and serious contribution from pretty much everyone around the table.
NHS could end up 'permanently swallowing' all £12bn raised by tax hike for social care, thinktank warns
This morning the Labour MP Chris Bryant posted this on Twitter.
I bet not a single penny of this 10% manifesto-defying tax hike will end up with the care system.
— Chris Bryant (@RhonddaBryant) September 8, 2021
Within the last hour the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the tax and spending thinktank, has published a new analysis of the plans announced yesterday, and it has come close to saying that Bryant is right. It says that the NHS almost always ends up spending more than the government planned (only twice in the last 40 years has the rise in health spending undershot expectations) and that if, as seems likely, that happens again, “the ‘temporary’ increases in NHS funding announced this week could end up permanently swallowing up the money raised by the tax rise”.
Ben Zaranko, an IFS economist who wrote the briefing, said:
The extra funding provided for the NHS in yesterday’s announcement will result in spending growing at 3.9% a year between 2018−19 and 2024−25, exactly the same rate of growth as was planned between 2018−19 and 2023−24. That suggests little or no long-term additional costs as a result of the pandemic. History suggests these plans will be topped up further – they have been in almost every year for the last 40 years. That could leave little if any of the tax rises announced yesterday available for social care.
The briefing also says health is taking an “ever-growing” share of government spending. In 1999-2000 it accounted for 27% of all day-day public service spending. By 2009-10 it was 32%, by 2019-20 it was 42% and by 2024-25 it is set to be 44%.
Javid says he has not even considered potential need for 'firebreak' lockdown in October
And here are some lines from Sajid Javid’s interviews on Covid.
- Javid, the health secretary, said he was “very confident” that a Covid vaccine booster programme would go ahead this autumn. He told Sky News:
In terms of who actually gets it and when, we’re waiting for final advice which could come across, certainly, in the next few days from the [Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation] ... I’m confident that we can start the booster programme this month.
Originally the government suggested all over-50s would be offered a booster vaccine, but many scientists do not believe this is necessary and so it is still not clear what exactly the JCVI will recommend, and what ministers will decide. Given the popularity of the original vaccine programme, it is thought ministers will want to roll out booster vaccines quite widely too.
- He said he expected a recommendation from the UK’s chief medical officers within the next few days on whether to vaccinate all 12 to 15-year-olds. He said:
I want to give them the breathing space, it’s their independent view and that’s exactly what it should be. But I would expect to hear from them in the next few days.
- He said that if a child and a parent disagree on whether the child should have a vaccine, the view of the child should normally take precedence. He explained:
If there is a difference of opinion between the child and the parent then we have specialists that work in this area, the schools vaccination service. They would usually literally sit down with the parent and the child, and try to reach some kind of consensus.
If ultimately that doesn’t work, as along as we believe that the child is competent enough to make this decision then the child will prevail.
- He said he had not even considered the potential need for a “firebreak” lockdown in October. Asked about a report yesterday claiming the government was planning this, he said:
I don’t think that’s something we need to consider. I haven’t even thought about that as an option at this point.
I think the decisions that we’ve made in the last few weeks and certainly in the time I’ve been heath secretary, I think they’ve turned out to be the right decisions.
Vaccines are working. Yes, there are still infections, of course there still are. That’s true around the world. But the number of people going into hospital, and certainly those dying, is mercifully low, and that’s because of the vaccines.
Javid defends bogus claim that Brexit released £350m per week for NHS
Here are some more lines from Sajid Javid’s interviews this morning relating to yesterday’s announcement.
- Javid, the health secretary, said he could not guarantee that the £12bn tax increase announced yesterday would be enough to clear the backlog for NHS operations. He told Sky News that he thought there was “enough money” for the NHS and for adult social care. But when he was asked if the money would clear the backlog, he replied:
No responsible health secretary can make that kind of guarantee. What I can be absolutely certain of is that this will massively reduce the waiting list from where it would otherwise have been.
When asked about the same issue on the Today programme, Javid said that waiting lists would be “a lot, lot lower” because of the extra money going into the NHS. But he said he could not say exactly how they would be cut because the NHS did not know how many people would come forward seeking treatment that they postponed during the pandemic. He explained:
I can’t tell you exactly how much lower it will be because, for example, I don’t know how many of [the 7 million people estimated to have avoided going to hospital during the pandemic] are going to come back. That’s what the NHS refers to as the bounce back. What’s the assumption?
The NHS has never been through anything like this before. We don’t know that. We have to make an assumption.
What I can say though is I want as many of those people to come back as they can, I want them to know that the NHS is there, it’s open for them. I don’t want anyone to suffer out there.
This chart, from the Spectator’s Fraser Nelson, illustrates the problem.
Sajid Javid tells R4 that during the lockdowns some seven million “didn’t get seen”. This, from Spectator Data Hub, shows more: https://t.co/potWZQyIkc pic.twitter.com/7Vx7Kv65uq
— Fraser Nelson (@FraserNelson) September 8, 2021
- Javid claimed that the NHS was getting an extra £350m per week after Brexit, as promised by the Vote Leave campaign. In an interview on LBC, Nick Ferrari asked what had happened to that £350m, and why the NHS needed extra money if that cash was available. Javid seemed reluctant to discuss the £350m per week figure specifically. But he did not contest that it existed and, when Ferrari pressed him on where it went, he replied:
As we’ve left the EU it happened at the same time as the global pandemic and that money, and much, much more, has gone into the health and care service. So we have seen in the first year of the pandemic, the government put in an additional more than £40bn – so much more than the figure that you focus on.
This answer was misleading because the £350m was not an accurate figure in the first place. Javid must know this, but Boris Johnson still claims that the figure was justified, and so rather than challenge the figure, Javid found it more expedient to make a general point about the NHS getting extra funding. Kate Nicholson at HuffPost has a full write-up of this exchange.
- Javid appeared to concede that the plans announced yesterday would not stop some people having to sell their homes to fund their care. In the Conservatives’ 2019 manifesto (pdf) they said their plan for social care would ensure “nobody needing care should be forced to sell their home to pay for it”. When it was put to Javid that even under the new, more generous arrangements announced yesterday some people would still need to sell their homes to fund their care, he said deferred payment agreements meant that people needing to raise money for care do not need to sell their homes while they are alive, because they can get a loan that is repaid when their estate is sold after their death. (These DPAs are already available.) Javid also said people in England could now be confident that their total care costs would not exceed £86,000. He also stressed that, because the means test was now more generous, people would be able to retain more of their assets before starting to contribute to the costs of their care.
- He defended the decision to wait until October 2023 before bringing in the £86,000 lifetime cap on the amount any person in England will have to pay for their social care. Asked why this could not come in sooner, he told LBC:
It’s just not possible to have such a huge change to the way we do our social care in this country and implement that ... it requires specific legislation to go through parliament.
The history of our government is littered with governments of the past making promises on massive strategic changes in such a short timeframe, that they knew couldn’t possibly be met, and they end up failing.
I’m not in that game, I want to make sure that we deliver on this promise.
- He claimed the plan announced yesterday was “a very Conservative thing to do”. He told LBC:
As Conservatives, we believe in the NHS, that it should be the world-class universal health service, free at the point of use, paid out of general taxation for all of us ... If we believe in an NHS that’s paid out of general taxation, this is a very Conservative move.
Also as a Conservative, I believe in fiscal responsibility. That means that if we are going to raise taxes you’ve got to be able to absolutely 100% justify that, and I think we’ve done that both with health care and the adult social care package yesterday, but also you should try and keep taxes as low as possible and be as fair as possible.
- He said the tax increase proposed was “a very progressive way of raising money” because half the money raised would come from the highest 14% of earners.
Javid claims Tories are still ‘party of low taxation’ after £12bn health levy
Good morning. Boris Johnson takes a close interest in how his government is reported by the national newspapers and, having announced a £12bn tax rise that clearly breaks a manifesto promise, he might have expected a mauling. Although the coverage is certainly critical, it could have been worse. But Johnson will be paying particular attention to his former employer, the Daily Telegraph, an institution he describes as his “true boss”, and, like other conservative papers, it is particularly interested in the idea that Johnson’s announcement means the Tories have given up on being a low-tax party.
Here is the Telegraph’s front page.
The front page of tomorrow's Daily Telegraph:
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) September 7, 2021
'Highest taxes since the War'#TomorrowsPapersToday
Sign up for the Front Page newsletterhttps://t.co/x8AV4Oomry pic.twitter.com/yHDse4WrOH
And here is the Times’.
Wednesday’s TIMES: “Tax burden will rise to highest in 70 years” #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/IvpaE6aZd7
— Allie Hodgkins-Brown (@AllieHBNews) September 8, 2021
Both papers are understating the case. The highest tax burden for 70 years means the highest tax burden in history, because before the creation of the postwar welfare state, tax was lower because the state just did a lot less. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says the tax burden is now at its highest-ever sustained level. (That means excluding wars.) The Daily Mail acknowledges this.
Wednesday’s Daily MAIL: “Now Make The Care Worth The Cost Boris” #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/Ow3tSHGeCh
— Allie Hodgkins-Brown (@AllieHBNews) September 7, 2021
My colleague Helen Sullivan has a full report on how the papers are covering the announcement this morning here.
On the Today programme this morning Torsten Bell, a former Labour party policy adviser who now heads the Resolution Foundation thinktank, said yesterday’s announcement meant the Tories were no longer a low-tax party.
We’ve learned that low-tax Conservatism is dead. This is the biggest set of tax rises since the 1970s if you take this together with the tax rises in the March budget.
But Sajid Javid, the health secretary, has denied this. He told the Today programme:
We are the party of low taxation, we will always be a party of low taxation.
When the presenter, Nick Robinson, told him that the tax burden was now at its highest level ever, Javid replied:
Actually, even with this change in the levy, if you take that into account and use the [Office for Budget Responsibility’s] latest numbers, that means the total tax burden as a proportion of our GDP is about 35.5%. That is still lower than France, Italy and Germany. We are still a low-tax country after this change, and we will always remain a low-tax country.
But we are also a responsible, Conservative government that believes passionately in the NHS, and I think this package shows exactly the lengths we would go to to support the NHS.
Here is the agenda for the day.
12pm: Boris Johnson faces Sir Keir Starmer at PMQs.
Around 1pm: MPs start the debate on the £12bn tax rise for health and social care announced yesterday. The vote, which the government is expected to win comfortably, will be at 7pm.
After 2pm: Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, gives a statement to the Scottish parliament on Covid.
Today I will mostly be focusing on reaction to yesterday’s health and social care announcement, PMQs and the debate in the Commons. 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
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