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PMQs: Boris Johnson faces Keir Starmer before debate on tax rise for health and social care – live
PMQs: Starmer accuses Johnson of ‘hammering workers’ before debate on tax rise for health and social care – live
(32 minutes later)
PM faces questions in Commons after analysis suggests NHS could ‘permanently swallow’ all £12bn raised for social care
Labour leader says PM cannot even say that tax rise will clear the NHS backlog during PMQs
Starmer says Johnson did not say no one would have to sell their home.
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?
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 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.
Johnson says his plans will allow the insurance industry to provide insurance for the costs of social care. He asks what Labour would do?
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?
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 disagrees. He says the rich are paying more.
Johnson says he is taking the tough decisions the country wants to see. He challenges Starmer to explain who he will vote tonight.
Wendy Chamberlain (Lib Dem) asks what practical support will be provided to EU citizens trying to stay in the UK.
(Labour HQ weren’t saying when I asked earlier.)
Johnson says the EU settlement scheme has helped 6 million people. That is double the number expected.
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.
Peter Kyle (Lab) asks Johnson if he can say Gavin Williamson is the right person to be education secretary.
Johnson says Mackinlay’s constituents should be optimistic about what technology will be able to achieve.
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.
There are loud cheers for Boris Johnson from the Tories as he starts.
James Gray (Con) asks the PM to join him in thanking volunteers for St John Ambulance.
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 they do an astonishing job. And he urges people who have not yet had a Covid vaccine to get one now.
Johnson says he is proud of what the government has done in putting its arms around the British people.
Neale Hanvey (Alba) asks what Johnson means when he says people should rise out of poverty through their own efforts.
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.
Johnson says he wants to see a jobs-led recovery. He is proud to see wages rising by the highest rate for years.
PMQs is about to start.
Lee Anderson (Con) says migrants crossing the Channel should be sent straight back.
Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.
Johnson says human trafficking is a vile trade. The government is trying to stop it, he says.
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:
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.
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.
Johnson says he will look into it.
The amendments are available here (pdf).
Richard Drax (Con) invites the PM to visit Weymouth, so he can see why it needs better infrastructure.
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.
Johnson says he can think of nothing better than a trip to Weymouth.
But at a briefing today Hart said:
Johnson says the shortage of HGV drivers is affecting countries all over Europe.
This morning the Labour MP Chris Bryant posted this on Twitter.
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 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%.
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
This chart, from the Spectator’s Fraser Nelson, illustrates the problem.
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:
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:
He claimed the plan announced yesterday was “a very Conservative thing to do”. He told LBC:
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.
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.
And here is the Times’.
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.
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.
But Sajid Javid, the health secretary, has denied this. He told the Today programme:
When the presenter, Nick Robinson, told him that the tax burden was now at its highest level ever, Javid replied:
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
