Boris Johnson has doubled down on a controversial planned tax hike to boost health funding, in a refusal to placate some Tory MPs concerned by the cost-of-living crisis.
The PM has been facing pressure from within his own party to scrap or at least delay the National Insurance (NI) increase of 1.25 percentage points - the equivalent to a 10 per cent increase in deductions from pay packets across the country from April.
Mr Johnson and Mr Sunak put on a united front as they made a firm commitment to go ahead with a controversial tax rise designed to tackle the Covid-induced NHS backlog and reform social care.
