Opening summary
Good morning, and welcome to our continued coverage of the 2024 general election campaign.
Labour and the Conservatives are set to continue clashing over tax on the campaign trail today, with the Tories appearing to put most of their efforts into trying to make this a key dividing issue in an election they are looking extremely likely to lose, according to the polls.
After the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, yesterday said he would not impose capital gains tax (a tax you pay when you sell an asset which has gone up in value) on the sale of family homes, the Tories challenged him to rule out changes to council tax bands and rates.
Treasury chief secretary Laura Trott said that if Labour refused to rule out those changes “then they are planning to do it”, prompting a Labour spokesperson to say: “We are not going to spend the next two weeks responding to whatever fantasy plans the Tories are making up.”
Speaking to the Sun on Sunday, the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, claimed Labour would turn Britain into a so-called “taxtopia” – an attack Labour described as desperate.
Hunt said:
On tax, yes we put it up. But we started putting it down with four pence off national insurance.
That’s a tax cut for working people and we want to go further in the next parliament. Compare that to taxtopia. Taxtopia is what we will get under a Labour government.
The transport secretary, Mark Harper, and shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, are being interviewed by broadcasters this morning. Expect them both to be pressed on their tax policies then.
Health also features heavily on today’s agenda, with Labour and the Liberal Democrats both trailing their plans to cut cancer waiting times.
The shadow health secretary has said his party would deliver an extra 40,000 appointments, tests and scans each week at evenings and weekends and double the number of CT and MRI scanners.
The Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, say they plan a cash injection of £1bn for radiotherapy machines, increasing their number by 200 throughout the NHS system.
It comes as analysis indicates that the election points to historically low support for the two major parties. Elections researcher Dylan Difford found that according to current polling, the main parties were on course for their lowest share of the vote since 1945. He said that the elections that took place in the wake of Brexit could actually be the exception, masking a longer-term fall in backing for the big two.
It is Yohannes Lowe here for the next couple of hours. If you want to get my attention then please do email me on [email protected]. Also, please note that comments will not be open on the blog until around 10am.
Key events
Labour and the Conservatives would both leave the NHS with lower spending increases than during the years of Tory austerity, according to an independent analysis of their manifestos by a leading health thinktank.
The assessment by the respected Nuffield Trust of the costed NHS policies of both parties, announced in their manifestos last week, says the level of funding increases would leave them struggling to pay existing staff costs, let alone the bill for massive planned increases in doctors, nurses and other staff in the long-term workforce plan agreed last year.
The Nuffield Trust said that “the manifestos imply increases [in annual funding for the NHS] between 2024-25 and 2028-29 of 1.5% each year for the Liberal Democrats, 0.9% for the Conservatives and 1.1% for Labour.
“Both Conservative and Labour proposals would represent a lower level of funding increase than the period of ‘austerity’ between 2010-11 and 2014-15.
“This would be an unprecedented slowdown in NHS finances and it is inconceivable that it would accompany the dramatic recovery all are promising. This slowdown follows three years of particularly constrained finances.”
The trust added that the planned funding increases “would make the next few years the tightest period of funding in NHS history”.
You can read the full story by my colleagues Toby Helm, Jon Ungoed-Thomas and Michael Savage here:
Opening summary
Good morning, and welcome to our continued coverage of the 2024 general election campaign.
Labour and the Conservatives are set to continue clashing over tax on the campaign trail today, with the Tories appearing to put most of their efforts into trying to make this a key dividing issue in an election they are looking extremely likely to lose, according to the polls.
After the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, yesterday said he would not impose capital gains tax (a tax you pay when you sell an asset which has gone up in value) on the sale of family homes, the Tories challenged him to rule out changes to council tax bands and rates.
Treasury chief secretary Laura Trott said that if Labour refused to rule out those changes “then they are planning to do it”, prompting a Labour spokesperson to say: “We are not going to spend the next two weeks responding to whatever fantasy plans the Tories are making up.”
Speaking to the Sun on Sunday, the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, claimed Labour would turn Britain into a so-called “taxtopia” – an attack Labour described as desperate.
Hunt said:
On tax, yes we put it up. But we started putting it down with four pence off national insurance.
That’s a tax cut for working people and we want to go further in the next parliament. Compare that to taxtopia. Taxtopia is what we will get under a Labour government.
The transport secretary, Mark Harper, and shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, are being interviewed by broadcasters this morning. Expect them both to be pressed on their tax policies then.
Health also features heavily on today’s agenda, with Labour and the Liberal Democrats both trailing their plans to cut cancer waiting times.
The shadow health secretary has said his party would deliver an extra 40,000 appointments, tests and scans each week at evenings and weekends and double the number of CT and MRI scanners.
The Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, say they plan a cash injection of £1bn for radiotherapy machines, increasing their number by 200 throughout the NHS system.
It comes as analysis indicates that the election points to historically low support for the two major parties. Elections researcher Dylan Difford found that according to current polling, the main parties were on course for their lowest share of the vote since 1945. He said that the elections that took place in the wake of Brexit could actually be the exception, masking a longer-term fall in backing for the big two.
It is Yohannes Lowe here for the next couple of hours. If you want to get my attention then please do email me on [email protected]. Also, please note that comments will not be open on the blog until around 10am.