According to a report Through Steven Swinford in today's Times, Labor is considering offering tax cuts at the general election. He says:
Rachel Reeves is considering plans to offer income tax or national insurance cuts in Labour's general election manifesto to show the party is on the side of “opportunity and ambition”.
The shadow chancellor is facing pressure from frontbenchers to make a 'retail' tax offer to voters struggling with the cost of living. She has said she “doesn't make excuses because she wants working people to have more money” and that she believes the tax burden is too high.
Reeves believes the tax cuts offered by Labor should be “bomb-proof” and not threaten the party's fiscal credibility, which it sees as integral to an election victory.
Swinford also says that while Labor is opposed to reducing or abolishing inheritance tax, it is likely to support any move to cut income tax if Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, does so in the March budget. There are reports suggesting that a 2p cut in the basic income tax rate is being considered. On weekends a report in the Sunday Times quoted an unnamed minister as saying:
The tax cuts in March will be huge. Either they work or we leave Labor with a major headache.
While trainee doctors are on strike, some of their work in hospitals will be taken over by consultants. But Dr. Layla McCay, policy director at the NHS Confederationwhich represents NHS trusts, told LBC this morning that contingency plans at individual hospitals would be “at risk” if just one or two consultants were ill.
She explained:
Across the country, leaders are telling us that this particular round of industrial action, coming as this is happening, and lasting for so long, may be the toughest challenge yet for the NHS…
Plans have been made and people have worked very, very hard on these schedules. But the rosters are pretty much covered so it only takes one or two consultants to get sick – there are a lot of Covid and flu, norovirus and other winter viruses around at the moment and a few may get sick – then it goes that puts the whole plan at risk, which is why NHS leaders are so concerned that this is skating on thin ice.
Good morning. When Dominic Cummings secretly met Rishi Sunak last summer to give him advice on how Sunak could win the election, he said the Prime Minister should settle the NHS strikes (presumably by paying staff more). Sunak decided against hiring Cummings as his campaign supremo, but NHS staff were offered better pay deals and by the end of the year nurses, consultants and other health workers had stopped, or at least paused, strike action. But Sunak has not done enough to appease young doctors in England and this morning they began a six-day strike – the longest in the 75-year history of the NHS.
If Dennis Campbell reports in its nightly preview that this strike is taking place during what is considered the busiest week of the year for hospitals.
Andrew Gregory has a question and answer session on why the strike is happening here.
And Archie Bland has an explainer who reviews some of the claims and counterclaims from people on each side.
The BMAwhich represents junior doctors (hospital doctors below consultant level – most of whom have significant experience and would not be considered 'junior' in another workplace), says the junior doctors want a 35% pay increase to compensate for the extent to which their doctors Wages have fallen in real terms over the past fifteen years.
But in an interview on the Today program this morning: Dr. Vivek Trivedi, co-chair of the BMA's junior doctors committee, said his members were not expecting an immediate 35% increase. He said:
We are not asking for an increase or wage recovery overnight. We're not even saying it has to be done within a year. We like to look at deals that span a number of years.
But what we need to do is move in that direction and, above all, not promote wage erosion. That average 3% pay increase (the latest government offer, on top of the 8.8% offered last summer) would still amount to pay cuts for many doctors this year.
The government says it will not negotiate with the BMA while the strike takes place. But Trivedi said this was an unnecessary condition that the government had ignored in the past. He explained:
That's a rule they made themselves. There is no law that prevents them from talking to us while strikes are taking place. And in fact, we saw the same government taking a different approach when dealing with the criminal lawyers. They negotiated with the lawyers and stopped them from striking while they were striking, by coming up with an offer that was appropriate to present to their membership.
Trivedi said if the junior doctors did not strike, they would simply be ignored by the government.
The House of Commons is still in recess and Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer are expected to hold their first public events of the year tomorrow, not today. But Reform UK is holding a press conference at 10.30am at the start of the year, and Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, is also holding a campaign event in Guildford, where he will discuss his party's prospects of winning seats in the Tories will emphasize. “blue wall”.
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