Government bodies ‘exempt’ from health and social care levy

  The Treasury has admitted that government bodies will be effectively exempt from a new tax hike, during a committee session on efficiency in government spending. Cat Little, director general public spending at the Treasury, told the public accounts committee that “government departments who are directly employing individuals who have to pay higher employer national […]

Fixing social care: ‘People don’t want to think about it’

Will £5.4 billion over three years be enough to create meaningful change in the social care sector

Creating a ‘safe-space’ in health and care investigations

Thomas Reynolds explains why we are urging MPs to make a small but crucial amendment to the legislation.

MPs vote through controversial national insurance rise

MPs voted to raise NI by 1.25 percentage points yesterday evening.

National insurance rise dominates PMQs

The SNP’s Westminster leader called the planned National Insurance rise a “regressive Tory poll tax”.

Government breaks manifesto pledge to fund social care

Boris Johnson declared that “a global pandemic was in no one’s manifesto”, as he defended the government breaking a manifesto pledge to tackle the NHS backlog and fund social care. In newly unveiled plans to overhaul social care, the prime minister announced a new 1.25% Health and Social Care Levy, funded by National Insurance Contributions. […]

We shouldn’t raise National Insurance, we should scrap it

National Insurance should be scrapped and rolled into Income Tax, Ben Cope argues.

Hospices in England face a huge struggle to match NHS pay increase

The 3% nursing may leave hospices in a £25m deficit.

The challenges in Sajid Javid’s in-tray as health secretary

Even at the best of times being secretary of state for health and social care is one of the hottest seats in government.

The challenge of surging deaths at home

The numbers of people dying at home surged significantly during the covid pandemic, but not from covid.