Kate Andrews

Will Labour and the Tories be heading into the next election ‘following the same tram lines on spending?’ That was the question the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg put to Rachel Reeves this morning, as the shadow chancellor insisted once again that the Labour party is committed to fiscal discipline, promising to ‘not play fast and loose with the public finances’. Labour may not need to show a radical difference in spending priorities if they can stand out in other areas Reeves tried to suggest the differences in tax-and-spend policy would still be significant, citing Labour’s proposed changes to non-domiciled tax status in the UK. But if this is really going to be the dividing line between the two parties going into a general election, then there is very little difference at all.

We’re going to hear a lot about the NHS this week: mostly tributes and praise – and even a few prayers – all in recognition of its 75th anniversary on Wednesday. The loudest criticism you’re likely to hear will be about underfunding – which is not the fault of NHS officials, really, but rather the fault of politicians who set the health service’s budget. The NHS is only falling short on patient outcomes, the logic goes, because it’s being denied resources in the first place. Is it really? New data published by the OECD this afternoon pops some of those birthday balloons. It reveals that the NHS actually remains one of the best-funded healthcare systems in the world.

The NHS is in crisis, but the government at last has a plan: a ‘Long-term Workforce plan’, that is, aimed at getting staffing levels up to something functional in the years to come. The £2.4 billion blueprint (which has big question marks around how it will be funded) was published today. Medic placements will be doubled to 15,000 a year and close to 25,000 more nursing and midwife places will be created by the start of the next decade. These might be good ideas but they will do little to help ease the misery of those stuck on the NHS's enormous waiting lists. The plan comes a week ahead of the 75th anniversary of the NHS — but also as it dawns on government that it may not meet one of its five pledges, to get the NHS waiting list down by the end of the year.

In December Jeremy Hunt hosted a mortgage summit, attended by lenders and the Financial Conduct Authority, to discuss rate woes. At the time, the numbers were at least moving in the right direction. During Liz Truss’s 49-day premiership, the FCA expected interest rates to rise to 5.5 per cent, an increase which was forecast to put 570,000 people into mortgage payment difficulty. Once Rishi Sunak and Hunt undid Truss’s mini-Budget, things looked calmer: a 4.5 per cent peak was expected, and 356,000 people were due to be in difficulty. Hunt was still struck by the figure. Horribly high, he thought. The Chancellor used the meeting to lay the foundation for regulatory changes that could be used in the future to help struggling mortgage-holders.