Kate Andrews

Usually when the Commonwealth Fund releases its ‘Mirror, Mirror’ study of healthcare systems, it makes waves across the UK media. You might not recognise the formal title of the study, but you’ll be familiar with its findings: this outlier research tends to rank the UK National Health Service as one of the best healthcare systems in the developed world. It’s a hallowed report for much of the UK medical community and commentariat, reaffirming their unquestioning devotion to the NHS as a truly unique system and the ‘envy of the world’.

America’s economy has officially recovered to its pre-pandemic levels, as Q2 GDP figures saw an annualised increase of 6.5 per cent. This is a positive update, on the face of it, but that’s more or less where the good news stops. The country’s GDP figures have come in notably below the consensus of what was expected, which was something closer to 8.5 per cent.  The news comes just a day after the International Monetary Fund forecast the United States and the UK would lead advanced countries with their rate of economic recovery, revising its estimates for the States upwards to 7.0 per cent this year and 4.9 per cent next year.

As the government continues to put forward an extremely cautious narrative about re-opening, more evidence emerged today that the economy is surging ahead. The International Monetary Fund has once again upgraded its forecast for Britain's growth this year: its April prediction of 5.3 per cent growth in 2021 has now been revised upward to 7 per cent. If correct, the UK could boast one of the fastest growing economies amongst major countries, with a recovery looking to be on par with the United States. Today’s update from the IMF fits a trend. Just this weekend the EY Item Club forecast 7.6 per cent growth this year – the fastest rate of growth in Britain for 80 years.

Well, that didn’t take long. Two days ago, a leaked report revealed that the government was considering using a national insurance tax hike to pay for the NHS backlog and social care. Now it looks as though the money could be diverted elsewhere.  The anticipated increase of at least one per cent on national insurance would transfer an additional £6bn from taxpayers to the Treasury. But today, the Times reports that £1.5bn of that sum may not go to hip replacements or speeding up the timeline for cancer patients to access treatment. Instead it could help fund the three per cent NHS pay raise, which has been promised by health secretary Sajid Javid.

The tax burden in the UK is nearing a 70-year high — but that’s not stopping ministers from mulling over plans to hike taxes further. According to reports this morning, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak are close to agreeing an increase to national insurance to help address the NHS backlog (five million patients in England, and counting). They also want to fill the long-standing black hole in the social care budget: something Johnson promised he’d address nearly two years ago to the day when he first entered Downing Street. The rumours have immediately led to criticism of the government’s willingness to break its manifesto pledge, not to raise income tax, national insurance or VAT.

Inflation is on the rise again. For the third consecutive month, the Consumer Prices index outpaced the forecasters’ consensus, landing at 2.5 per cent in June, up from 2.1 per cent in May.  It’s not just that inflation is overshooting expectations that should trouble us, but that its pace of growth is so fast: at the start of the year, the headline rate was still close to the ground, coming in at 0.7 per cent in January and March, and 0.4 per cent February.  It is becoming harder for the Bank of England to stick to its prediction that inflation will peak around three per cent Now, it’s ahead of the Bank of England’s target – and there are no signs of retreat.

At yesterday’s press conference, Boris Johnson announced that his government was shelving plans for domestic ‘Covid certificates’ (i.e. vaccine passports), at least for the time being, although this won’t stop private businesses or venues from deciding to use them.  We also learned today that it won’t stop the creation of a two-tier system (as Lara Prendergast warned months ago) for the ‘jabs and jab nots’. New policies have been confirmed that will allow for the double-jabbed to skip quarantine if they’ve been in contact with someone who tests positive for Covid-19 (with exemptions granted to under-18s as well).