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Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, has declined to rule out a hike in income tax ahead of the next election or whether the government will allow councils to increase bills in order to pay for social care.It comes after the Local Government Association (LGA) warned that council tax may have to rise to plug a black hole in social care, claiming that authorities in England face extra cost pressures of almost £8 billion by 2024/5 “just to keep vital local services running at today’s levels”.Boris Johnson is also “acutely aware” of the state of local authorities’ finances – depleted during the Covid crisis – and is mulling proposals to increase the social care element of council tax, according to The Times.Quizzed on whether he could guarantee the public won’t see a rise in council tax, the chancellor told Sky News: “Social care is funded by a max of different ways — one way is through local taxes, like council tax.“Later in the year, we have something called the local government finance settlement, where the secretary of state for local government sets out all the plans for local government for the coming year.”But, he said, it wouldn’t be “right for me to pre-empt that”, adding: “What people should know is we want to put more money into social care that’s why we took the decision we did [to increase national insurance]”.But with a looming increase in national insurance in April 2022, rising energy bills, the decision by ministers to end the £20-per-week universal credit uplift, and the end of the furlough scheme, Labour is likely to seize on the comments.Describing the manifesto-busting decision to increase national insurance contributions from April 2022 — which will later become and NHS and social care levy — Mr Sunak added: “No chancellor wants to do that.”“But just remember why we did that — that was to make sure our NHS could get the significant resources that it needs to help recover strongly from coronavirus and also alongside that to usher in some reform to social care that governments have ducked for decades.” In a separate interview on BBC Breakfast ahead of his speech to the Conservative conference, Mr Sunak also declined to rule out hiking income tax ahead of the next election.“Recently we did make a significant announcement on tax and it was a difficult decision to make, especially for a Conservative chancellor and a Conservative prime minister, but we took that decision because we wanted to make sure the NHS got the significant funds it requires to help recover strongly from coronavirus.”Elsewhere, the chancellor echoed comments from a recent interview, conceding that supply chains may still face disruption at Christmas, but insisted the government was trying to “mitigate” the problem.“As we’ve said, we’re seeing supply disruption, not just here but in lots of different places, and there are things we can try and mitigate, and we are,” Mr Sunak told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.“But we can’t wave a magic wand. There’s nothing I can do about the decision by a country in Asia to shut down a port because of a coronavirus outbreak — there’s very little I can do, or anyone can do about that and that will affect lots of countries and lots of supply chains.“But be assured we are doing everything that is in our control to try and mitigate some of these challenges.”Asked again on whether there could be shortages at Christmas, the chancellor said: “We are doing absolutely everything we can to mitigate that.” More

The chancellor Rishi Sunak will commit more than £500m in fresh funding to help people back into work as he seeks to stem the continuing turbulence of the coronavirus pandemic.Mr Sunak is shifting the focus on getting people into new or better jobs as the government comes under sustained pressure over a major squeeze on living standards.He will use his speech at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester on Monday to set out his vision of shaping the economy around “the forces of science, technology and imagination”.The chancellor will pledge to “make the United Kingdom the most exciting place on the planet” through enhanced infrastructure, improved skills and scientific investment.He will announce that the new funding will be used to help workers leaving the furlough scheme and unemployed over-50s back into work, while the “kickstart” scheme for young people will also be extended.But he has resisted expanding all of the support announced during the pandemic, with the furlough scheme ending and the £20-a-week uplift to universal credit falling away.Labour said extending the schemes “will do nothing to compensate” for the tax rises and the cost of living crisis, but businesses welcomed the “pivoting from furlough to economic recovery”.Fresh warnings of hardship have also been issued over the rise of the energy price cap and price hikes in shops.Household budgets will sustain a further blow next April when national insurance contributions rise by 1.25 per cent to help fund the NHS and social care.Ahead of his first in-person speech at the conference as chancellor, Mr Sunak said he is “ready to double-down” on his promise to “do whatever it takes” to recover from Covid-19.He said the furlough scheme protected 11 million jobs and the UK is “experiencing one of the strongest and fastest recoveries of any major economy in the world”.He added: “But the job is not done yet and I want to make sure our economy is fit for the future, and that means providing the support and skills people need to get into work and get on in life.”The kickstart scheme helping young people on universal credit will be extended to March next year under the measures. The £3,000 incentive for new apprentices will be extended until the end of January.Individuals who have come off furlough and are on universal credit will also be prioritised for help to find jobs under the “job finding support” scheme lasting until the end of the year.The Treasury said more than £500m of new funding will be used, coming from the education and the work and pensions departments. Further details will be set out in the upcoming spending review.Shadow work and pensions secretary Jonathan Reynolds, said: “The government’s struggling plan for jobs has failed to hit its original targets; it is not creating the number of jobs needed and has failed to address the supply chain crisis Britain is experiencing.“Giving himself an extended deadline will do nothing to compensate for the chancellor’s tax rises, cost of living crisis and cuts to universal credit which are set to hammer millions of working families.”Matthew Fell, the chief policy director at the Confederation of British Industry, said: “Businesses will welcome the chancellor’s plan for jobs pivoting from furlough to economic recovery.“With record vacancies and widespread labour shortages, this package’s success will be measured by its ability to get people back into work.“Businesses are committed to playing their full part in training and re-skilling the workforce of tomorrow as we move towards a new economy.”PA More

Boris Johnson is facing appeals from within his own party to delay a £6bn welfare cut by six months to help get the country’s poorest families through a cost-of-living crunch expected this winter.With energy and food bills soaring, and wage pressures expected to feed through to higher inflation, charities fear that the removal of the £20-a-week “uplift” to universal credit (UC) and working tax credits will force millions into hunger and hardship over the coming months.Scheduled for Wednesday, the cut – which has been branded “cruel” by one Tory MP – threatens to overshadow the prime minister’s keynote speech to the Conservative Party conference in Manchester on the same day. But Mr Johnson said on Sunday that it would not be “appropriate” to keep the uplift as the Covid-19 pandemic wanes, saying he was not willing to “raise taxes to subsidise low pay”.The architect of UC, former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, said that if the uplift could not stay indefinitely, it should at least be kept until disadvantaged families have weathered the winter.And Conservative MP Nigel Mills told The Independent: “With the cost of living going up sharply, this is not the time to take that help away.”Analysis from the anti-poverty charity the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has found that 5.5 million families will lose out by £1,040 a year through the loss of the uplift, pushing half a million people – including 200,000 children – into poverty.The foundation’s Katie Schmuecker said: “The prime minister is abandoning millions to hunger and hardship with his eyes wide open. The biggest ever overnight cut to social security flies in the face of the government’s mission to unite and level up our country.“People’s bills won’t get £87 a month cheaper from Wednesday, and families are already anxious about how they will get through a looming cost-of-living crisis. This decision is set to plunge half a million people into poverty, and shows a total disregard for the consequences. The prime minister cannot say he has not been warned; he must abandon this cut.”A poll for The Independent found that less than one-fifth (19 per cent) of voters supported the plan to slash UC, with 59 per cent saying the level of the benefit should be maintained or increased. Even among Conservative voters, just 34 per cent thought it was right to remove the uplift altogether, against 43 per cent who said it should be maintained or increased, and 13 per cent who said it should be kept at a reduced rate.“I think most people do want us to be as generous as we can to people in the most need, after they have been through such a difficult time,” said Mr Mills. “Voters get the need to control welfare spending and give people incentives to work, but they also think people should have a decent standard of life. “Being tough is fine, but being cruel gets you into a very difficult position with voters.”Chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced a £500m hardship fund to assist struggling families with grants for food, clothing and bills this winter.And on Monday he will unveil another £500m package to help unemployed people and workers coming off the furlough scheme to find new jobs.The next phase of the chancellor’s Plan for Jobs will include work coaches for low-paid employees on UC, a support package for over-50s to stay in work, and an extension to the Kickstart scheme, which helps young people into employment.Mr Sunak said: “At the start of this crisis I made a promise to do whatever it takes, and I’m ready to double down on that promise now as we come out of this crisis.”But Mr Mills said: “If we have £1bn to spend, then maybe universal credit is a better way to get money into people’s pockets than forcing them to apply for hardship grants or coaching schemes. A six-month extension would only cost £3bn – and maybe less, if the government is right about people getting back into work and working longer hours. That is less than 1 per cent of what we have spent on the pandemic.”Speaking to the BBC on Sunday, Mr Johnson said that the uplift was one of a number of support measures introduced in response to Covid-19 that were no longer needed. The “fiscal meteorite” of the pandemic had added £407bn to government spending, he said.“There was a whole package of measures, from furlough to Bounce Back loans to the Covid uplift, that are no longer appropriate,” said the PM.“What we would rather do is help people into better-paid, better-skilled jobs – which is what is happening. I’d rather see that than raising taxes to subsidise low pay.”But Sir Iain said: “Of all the things that have gone wrong in the pandemic, universal credit is the one thing that has quietly got on and helped support people without [their] having to queue up at jobcentres.“Even if the government is determined to do this, I would urge them to think about this over the period of the winter, not do it now. Think about it in February, March, as they approach the Budget, when they know what the cost of living is, when they know what inflation is, when they know what the difficulties are in the marketplace.“Things are moving in the wrong direction and that is going to hit the poorest in society the most. We need to make sure we keep the support measures in place for them.”TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady told a meeting on the fringe of the Manchester conference that the cut was “immoral”, adding: “It’s never too late to think again; no shame in changing your mind – I would really hope the government changes its mind on this one.”And Ryan Shorthouse, CEO of the conservative thinktank Bright Blue, said the government was making a “serious mistake”, saying: “A lot of people who need and deserve universal credit are in left-behind areas, and we’re making a substantial cut to their income.”Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesperson Christine Jardine said Mr Sunak’s packages “don’t come close to what people needed from the chancellor ahead of the winter”.  “As the cost-of-living crisis begins to hit, people want job security and to know they can pay soaring household bills,” she said.“Instead, the chancellor wants to end furlough, slash universal credit and raise taxes at the worst possible time. If the government thinks the answer is just to reannounce Kickstart – which is miles off meeting its targets – then they are out of touch and out of ideas.”And Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary Jonathan Reynolds said: “The government’s struggling Plan for Jobs has failed to hit its original targets; it is not creating the number of jobs needed and has failed to address the supply chain crisis Britain is experiencing.“Giving himself an extended deadline will do nothing to compensate for the chancellor’s tax rises, cost-of-living crisis and cuts to universal credit, which are set to hammer millions of working families.”The row came as TUC research found that one-fifth (20 per cent) of key workers had had to cut back on spending during the pandemic.Some 6 per cent said they had been forced to take on a second job to make ends meet, and 3 per cent said they had used food banks. More than a quarter (27 per cent) of the key workers said they did not feel they were fairly rewarded for the work they do.Ms O’Grady said: “Our shop workers, care assistants and school support staff have worked tirelessly to keep this country going through the pandemic.“The very least they deserve in return for their hard work is a decent standard of living for their families.“But many are struggling just to pay their basic bills and put food on the table. And one in five are facing the trauma of running out of money before payday. That’s not right.“Enough is enough. Ministers must use the autumn spending review to give all of our key workers the pay rise they so badly need. We must get the minimum wage up to £10 an hour to stop millions of working people from living in poverty.” More

Furious Labour MPs in Merseyside have turned on Keir Starmer after he wrote an article forThe Sun.MPs accused the Labour leader of betraying Liverpool and said he was “not fit” to lead to party following the publication of an opinion piece in the tabloid, which is widely boycotted on Merseyside for its coverage of the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster in 1989. Sir Keir had promised not to give interviews to the paper during his leadership campaign at a hustings in the city in January 2020.Ian Byrne, MP for Liverpool West Derby, said families of Hillsborough victims, survivors and the city itself “smeared by the rag” would feel “profoundly betrayed”. Mr Byrne, himself a Reds supporter who attended the FA Cup semi-final with Nottingham Forest at which 97 Liverpool fans died, added anyone who wrote for the paper was “not fit” to be Labour leader.Kim Johnson, the Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, said she felt “deep anger” and had written to Sir Keir asking him to come to Liverpool to meet the families of those killed and survivors.Paula Barker, Labour MP for Liverpool Wavertree, wrote on Twitter: “I do not subscribe to the view that we need to have a relationship with the rag in order to win an election – this is 2021 not 1997. He does not do this in my name.“Nevertheless, I apologise to everyone in my city, especially Hillsborough families and survivors.”Steve Rotheram, mayor of Liverpool City Region, added: “My position on that (supposed) newspaper and Labour politicians engaging with it has not changed.“The piece published today has unsurprisingly upset a lot of people across my region. The S*n is not and never will be welcome here.“I have been in touch with Keir to reiterate my position and express the disappointment that I and many others feel.”Joanne Anderson, directly elected Mayor of Liverpool, said Labour “should never work with this paper.”Liverpool supporters groups and Hillsborough survivors also spoke out over the article, which they described as a “kick in the teeth”.“This is hard to take. The lies in the S*n are part of the reason survivors still struggle and we have lost so many over the years. We will never forgive and never forget,” said the Hillsborough Survivors Support Alliance.Sir Keir has previously acknowledged the pain the newpaper caused with its coverage of the Hillsborough disaster. “This city has been wounded by the media — The Sun [has] hurt this city,” he said in Liverpool during the Labour leadership campaign. “I certainly won’t be giving any interviews to The Sun during this campaign.” But this week he wrote for the paper in a opinion piece criticising Boris Johnson over the “chaos” the shortage of HGV drivers has wreaked on Britain. The Merseyside boycott of The Sun came after it published notorious falsehoods on a front page headlined “The Truth”, alleging blame for the disaster laid with drunken Liverpool fans.After a justice campaign spanning three decades, victims’ families and survivors were vindicated in 2016, when a jury at the inquests unanimously ruled the fans were unlawfully killed and Liverpool supporters played no part in causing the fatal crushing at the Leppings Lane end of the Hillsborough ground on 15 April 1989.The Sun made a front-page apology in 2012 in the wake of the report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel, which led to the 2016 inquests, and again at the conclusion of those inquests. More

Brexit minister Lord Frost will declare that the “British Renaissance has begun” as the nation struggles with staffing issues linked to the departure from the European Union.He will tell the Tory party conference on Monday the “long bad dream” of EU membership is over, as he challenges Brussels to be more “ambitious” to solve separate issues over Northern Ireland.The Conservative peer’s speech will come as the UK continues to feel the effects of a fuel crisis and faces the prospect of shortages in the run up to Christmas due to a lack of HGV drivers.Boris Johnson appeared to admit that the issues are part of a “period of adjustment” after the departure from the EU.The prime minister said he would not “reach for the lever called uncontrolled immigration” to prevent a feared incineration of 120,000 pigs due to a shortage of abattoir and butchery workers.Lord Frost will use his speech in Manchester to look ahead to new opportunities presented by Brexit, such as new trade deals and a new immigration system.”All history, all experience, shows that democratic countries with free economies, which let people keep more of the money they have earned, make their own decisions, and manage their own lives, are not just richer but also happier and more admired by others,” he is expected to say.”That is where we need to take this country. The opportunities are huge. The long bad dream of our EU membership is over. The British renaissance has begun.”He will also reiterate a warning that the Northern Ireland Protocol he negotiated risks undermining the Good Friday Agreement and that the threshold for triggering Article 16 to effectively tear up parts of the deal has been met.The peer will tell Brussels to be more “ambitious” in their approach and warn that “tinkering at the edges” will not fix the fundamental problems with the post-Brexit deal on Northern Ireland.His speech will come after days of lengthy queues and petrol stations running dry.Pig farmers have also warned that up to 120,000 growing animals will have to be slaughtered and incinerated because of an acute shortage of butchery and abattoir workers.In an interview on Sunday, Mr Johnson said the “great hecatomb of pigs that you describe has not yet taken place, let’s see what happens”.He told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that “what we can’t do is in all these sectors simply go back to the tired, failed, old model, reach for the lever called uncontrolled immigration, get people in, low wages”.”There will be a period of adjustment, but that is, I think, what we need to see,” he added.PA More

Tony and Cherie Blair avoided paying £312,000 in tax on the purchase of a London property by acquiring an offshore company, according to a trove of leaked documents. The former British prime minister and his wife bought the £6.45m townhouse on Harcourt Street, Marylebone, in 2017 as an office for her legal advisory firm Omnia and her foundation for women. The manner of the deal allowed the Blairs to avoid having to pay stamp duty, as the tax is not paid when the holding company of a property is acquired rather than the building directly. There is no suggestion the Blairs actively tried to avoid paying the tax and the transaction was not illegal.In a statement, the couple stressed they had purchased the property “in a normal way through reputable estate agents” and had “nothing whatever to do with the original company nor those behind it”. They said they had “never used offshore schemes either to hide transactions or avoid tax”. Details of the deal emerged as part of the Pandora Papers investigation by a consortium of some 600 journalists from dozens of global media outlets, including The Guardian and the BBC’s Panorama. The huge cache of leaked financial documents reveal the secret offshore financial affairs of 35 world leaders, more than 100 billionaires and a string of influential figures in the world of politics and business.According to the leaked documents, the four-floor building purchased by the Blairs was previously owned by an offshore company based in the British Virgin Islands. At the time of the deal the firm, named Romanstone International Limited, was partially owned by Zayed Rashid Al Zayani, Bahrain’s minister for industry, commerce and tourism. The Blairs bought the building by establishing a British company named Harcourt Ventures to acquire the shares in Romanstone, the leaked documents claim. They each held a 50 per cent individual stake in the firm which was also registered for VAT. Stamp duty is paid by anyone purchasing a commercial or residential property valued above £150,000 and £125,000 respectively. Ms Blair said the sellers had insisted the property was sold in this fashion. “It is not unusual for a commercial office building to be held in a corporate vehicle or for vendors of such property not to want to dispose of the property separately,” she added.The couple said that “the acquisition of a company comes with different tax consequences” and they “will of course be liable for capital gains tax on resale”. Both the Blairs and the al-Zayanis said they did not initially know about each other’s involvement in the deal. Mr Blair has previously been critical of tax loopholes. In his campaign for the Labour leadership in 1994, he said: “We must tackle abuse of the tax system. For those who can employ the right accountants, the tax system is a haven of scams, perks, City deals and profits.”The Blairs have amassed a multimillion-pound portfolio of properties since leaving Downing Street in 2007. They had already spent over £30m on 38 residential properties prior to buying the office on Harcourt Street, according to the Daily Mail. Robert Palmer, of Tax Justice UK, told the BBC’s Panorama programme of the deal: “It partly doesn’t look great because most people cannot do the same thing… even if what the Blairs did was perfectly legal, perfectly legitimate in the business world, it feels instinctively really unfair because they got access to an advantage, a potential advantage that the rest of us don’t have.”A number of other world leaders were also named in the Pandora Papers. Czech prime minister Andrej Babis was revealed to have injected €19m into several shell companies to buy a large property, known as Chateau Bigaud, in a hilltop village in Mougins, France. According to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), who were involved in the Pandora Papers investigation, Mr Babis did not disclose the shell companies and the chateau in the asset declarations he is obligated to file as a public official. He did not respond to requests for comment.The leaked documents also claim that the King of Jordan secretly spent more than £70m on a property empire in the UK and US. Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein is alleged to have used a network of secretly-owned firms in the British Virgin Islands to purchase 15 homes since coming to power in 1999, including properties in California and London. Lawyers for King Abdullah denied any wrongdoing and told the BBC that he had used his personal wealth to buy the properties. They added that it was common practice for wealthy individuals to purchase properties via offshore companies for security reasons. The documents behind the Pandora Papers investigation are drawn from financial services companies including the British Virgin Islands, Panama, Belize, Cyprus and the United Arab Emirates. More

Menopausal women treated with hormone replacement therapy would not have to pay for their prescriptions under a proposed law. HRT is available on prescription in England for £9.35 a time but Labour MP Carolyn Harris is hoping to abolish the charges, The Sunday Times reported. Ms Harris said that she had enough support for a private member’s bill to change legislation. The bill will receive its second reading this month. NHS prescriptions for HRT are already free in Scotland and Wales and the therapy is used to top up levels of womens’ oestrogen and progesterone hormones during menopause.Many of the 3.4m women aged between 50 and 64 in the UK will experience symptoms of the menopause, with side effects including heart palpitations, hot flushes, anxiety and depression. The average age for a woman to reach the menopause is 51, according to the NHS. Many women are prescribed hormone replacement therapy for five years or longer, and treatments can often add up to thousands of pounds, The Independent’has previously reported. Carolyn Harris MP said that she was “extremely confident” MPs would back her bill, adding: “We have the numbers. I have so much support from across the House of Commons and I am very confident we will get this bill passed.“Is this government really prepared to let women in England suffer if they can’t afford to treat the symptoms of their menopause, while women in Wales and Scotland get access to their medications for free? Talk about doing English women a disservice.”She told The Sunday Times: “There are so many people out there who are not prepared for this and they don’t imagine it’s going to be as awful as it is.”The bill will go before MPs on 29 October/A Department of Health source said: “If we make HRT free for everyone who wants it, where does that stop, especially given that a large number of women on HRT get free prescriptions anyway. “We think the problem is more complex – for example, doctors not recognising the impact on women during the perimenopause.”A spokesperson for the Department of Health said: “The menopause affects half our population and is a huge concern to women across the country. The impact can be very difficult to live with and it’s crucial this is taken seriously and women get the support they need. “We’re deeply committed to ensuring those who want access to HRT get it and are taking immediate steps to drive women’s health to the top of the agenda through the first government-led women’s health strategy for England.” More

Boris Johnson has told business leaders that avoiding Christmas food shortages is their responsibility, claiming it is not the government’s job to “fix” supply problems.As the Conservative party conference opened, the prime minister admitted to having known for months that the haulage industry was in trouble – and, strikingly, admitted that the problems may continue into the festive season.But, when asked if more emergency visas would be issued in order to mitigate the situation, he turned the tables on the industries involved, arguing it was “fundamentally up to them to work out the way ahead”.“In the end, those businesses, those industries, are the best solvers of their own supply-chain issues – government can’t step in and fix every bit of the supply chain,” Mr Johnson told broadcasters.Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, underlined the message, claiming that the prime minister should escape blame even if people are unable to buy what they want at Christmas.“I don’t believe in a command-and-control economy, so I don’t believe the prime minister is responsible for what’s in the shops,” she insisted.Although Mr Johnson did not fully rule out further help – after the weekend U-turn that saw visas for HGV drivers extended – the prime minister’s stance is a blow to business groups, whose leaders are pleading for the government to step in.The British Chambers of Commerce said it was the government’s role to plug labour shortages, calling for visas to bring in EU workers to fill gaps in the care, hospitality, manufacturing and construction sectors.Calling for “clarity and a plan”, its director-general Shevaun Haviland said: “Let’s sit down now together and look at the other sectors where we know there are issues coming down the line.“Let’s try to get a plan in place for those, so we don’t get to another crisis point,” she told BBC Radio 4.Labour accused the prime minister of “taking the British people for fools” and said that shortages were not a price worth paying to secure the high-wage, high-skill economy everyone wants.“We won’t get there by keeping shelves empty and forecourts dry – and what we urgently need now are more HGV drivers,” said Bridget Phillipson, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury.“The shortfall of skilled workers we’re facing is a direct result of the Conservatives’ lack of planning and incompetence.”Alison Williams, a member of the Commons cross-party UK Trade and Business Commission and global head of data at DunnHumby, accused ministers of trying to “wash their hands” of the problems.“Countless businesses have told us about the problems caused by the government’s threadbare Brexit deal. It is an undeniable factor in the current supply crisis,” she said. Mr Johnson also sparked a row over the future of more than 100,000 pigs at risk of being slaughtered because a dearth of butchers has created a back-up on farms.“I hate to break it to you, but I am afraid our food-processing industry does involve the killing of a lot of animals,” he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, downplaying the problem.Nick Allen, chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, described the potential cull as “heartbreaking”, adding: “It is an incredibly distressing situation to find yourself in.”The clashes came as ministers shifted their position, having initially denied any link between Brexit and the staff and supply shortages.Speaking in Manchester, Mr Johnson switched tack, calling the problems a “period of adjustment” that will deliver the higher wages that Leave voters wanted when they backed Britain’s exit from the EU.Mr Johnson was asked by Mr Marr whether he meant that “we, as a country, have to go through some bumps, some shortages, some queues on the way – and that, folks, is what you voted for”. The prime minister replied: “When people voted for change in 2016, and when people voted for change again in 2019, as they did, they voted for the end of a broken model of the UK economy that relied on low wages, and low skill, and chronic low productivity – and we’re moving away from that.”Mr Johnson was also accused of misrepresenting official data when claiming that “wages are finally going up for the low-paid”.It was pointed out that the Office for National Statistics had found that “wages are not keeping pace with inflation”, so that “in real terms, over the last three months, wages have gone down, not up”.Meanwhile, the Petrol Retailers Association warned that, while supply is now “plentiful” in the north, there are still major shortages in London and the southeast. More