A planned £12bn rise in National Insurance from April will go ahead, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak have said.
The PM is under pressure from some Conservative MPs to scrap or at least delay the national insurance increase to win back support as he awaits the findings of Whitehall and police inquiries into claims of lockdown-busting parties held in Downing Street.
But Mr Johnson, together with Chancellor Rishi Sunak, has now made a firm commitment to go ahead with the 1.25 percentage point increase, designed to tackle the Covid-induced NHS backlog and reform social care.