Badenoch criticises plan to give mayors power to impose tourism tax
Kemi Badenoch has said the Conservatives are opposed to giving mayors the power to impose a tourism tax.
Speaking on Sky News, she said:
Right now we’re not even getting the number of tourists that we used to get. They’re going to so many other places.
We need to create jobs and grow our economy. Business does that. Taxing does not create jobs. It reduces them. We saw that with Rachel Reeves’ budget. I wish Labour had learned that lesson.
NHS England hospital waiting lists at highest level since October last year, figures show
And here are some more headline numbers from today’s NHS England performance figures,
Waiting lists in England went up in July, reaching their highest level for nine months. The Press Association says:
An estimated 7.33m treatments were waiting to be carried out at the end of July, relating to 6.21 million patients, according to NHS figures.
This is up from 7.27m treatments and 6.15 million patients at the end of June.
The numbers are the highest since October 2025, when the list stood at 7.40m treatments and 6.24m patients.
This chart, from the NHS England news release on waiting lists, shows what the trend has been over time.
Long waits for NHS hospital treatment in England have also increased. PA says:
An estimated 111,379 people had been waiting more than a year to start routine treatment at the end of July, up from 105,711 at the end of June.
Some 1.52% of people on the list for hospital treatment had been waiting more than 52 weeks in July, up month on month from 1.45%.
The government and NHS England had set a target of March this year for the figure to be reduced to less than 1%.
Meanwhile, an estimated 65.4% of patients in July began hospital treatment within 18 weeks of referral, down from 65.8% in June but above the target of 65% that the government and NHS England had set for March of this year.
The government has also pledged that 92% of patients in England will begin treatment within 18 weeks by the end of the current parliament in 2029.
A total of 79.3% of patients in England urgently referred for suspected cancer were diagnosed or had cancer ruled out within 28 days in July. “This is up slightly from 79.0% in June but is below the target of 80%,” PA says.
The proportion of patients who began their first definitive treatment for cancer in July within 62 days of an urgent referral or consultant upgrade was 71.2%, up from 69.9% in June. “The government and NHS England had set a target of March 2026 for this figure to reach 75%,” PA says.
In its own press release on these figures, NHS England says: “More patients than ever before were seen within four hours in A&E this summer, despite record demand on the NHS.”
Daily average for number of patients receiving corridor care in English hospitals down slightly in August, figures show
An average of 2,973 patients in England received corridor care each day in August, with 2,296 in A&E departments and 677 in other hospital areas, NHS figures show. The Press Association reports:
This is down slightly from an average of 3,028 patients per day in July, made up of 2,300 in A&Es and 728 in other areas.
It is the fourth month in a row that data has been published showing the level of corridor care in hospitals in England.
The figures cover patients who have been receiving corridor care for at least 45 minutes.
A patient is classed as receiving corridor care if their treatment does not take place in a clinically appropriate and safe setting.
The criteria used for defining an appropriate setting include at-bed services such as oxygen and call bells; whether privacy can be maintained; access to food, water and toilets; and whether lights can be turned off and noise levels minimised to allow sleep.
Badenoch rejects claim Tory cuts would increase homelessness, saying people would just move 'somewhere cheaper'
Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, has been doing an interview round this morning. She is keen to escalate her attack on Andy Burnham over his comment at PMQs yesterday that “we do everything to support our national security, but it can’t come at the expense of social security.”
Burnham said that the Tory plan to raise defence spending by £10bn a year mostly by cutting welfare would make hundreds of thousands of children homeless.
In an interview on the Today programme this morning, Badenoch rejected this claim. She said the Tory plans would “protect existing clients”, but some people would have to move somewhere cheaper.
She told the programme:
What we’re doing is making sure that people are protected, but capping the amount that people get on benefits because we need to look after our national security.
Without national security, there aren’t going to be any benefits. We’re all going to be in danger, far more people will be homeless, and the government’s first duty is defence of the realm …
What we are saying is that where people are living in areas where it’s too expensive. They’ll have to move somewhere cheaper. Moving somewhere cheaper is what everybody else does.
In August the Conservatives announced plans to “end social housing for foreign nationals”. They said that “almost 230,000 households currently in social housing would become ineligible under the policy, freeing homes for British families as tenancies turn over.”
Related: Tory plan to ban foreign nationals from social housing condemned as ‘divisive’
Updated
The government has responded to concerns about its tourism tax plans by stressing that it will be for mayors to decide if they want to use these powers. (See 8.58am.) A government source said:
We have always been clear that while central government will set the framework for this power, it will be up to local leaders and local voters to decide what is right for their area.
Hospitality sector claims thousands at jobs at risk from Burnham's plan to let mayors levy tourism tax
Good morning. Last year Andy Burnham, who was then mayor of Greater Manchester, and his close friend and ally Steve Rotheram, mayor of the Liverpool city region, were urging the government to allow mayors in England to bring in what they called a visitor levy.
Related: English mayors push for visitor levy to boost income from tourism
Burnham and Rotheram were pushing at an open door. In May this year Keir Starmer included plans for an overnight visitor levy bill in the king’s speech.
Scotland and Wales already have their own versions of this.
Now Burnham’s government is about to announce further details of the plan. The Daily Telegraph has the story.
In May the government was not specific about whether or not there would be a cap on how high the levy could go. In their Telegraph story, Szu Ping Chan, Harry Brennan and Eir Nolsøe say the plans being announced by the government will be more extensive than the hospitality industry expected. They report:
Officials stunned the hospitality industry late on Wednesday by announcing that English mayors and other local leaders will be able to impose an uncapped “overnight visitor levy” on anyone staying in hotels, holiday lets and bed and breakfasts.
Bosses said they had been led to believe that the levy would be capped, as is the case in Wales. However, England will now follow the Scottish model, where there is technically no upper limit on what can be charged.
Andrew Griffith, the shadow chancellor, told the paper: “An unlimited tourist tax would be hugely limiting for the chances of the young people who might otherwise be employed in tourism and hospitality.”
This morning Allen Simpson, chief executive of UK Hospitality, the trade body for the sector, claimed that this proposal would cost thousands of jobs. He told the Today programme:
What we’re talking about here is an open-ended power for mayors to set tourism taxes at any level they want.
Remember, if you go to Paris, if you go to Rome, if you go to Berlin, you’re paying a small tourism tax, but it’s capped. This one isn’t. And VAT is only 10%.
So even before England introduces this new tax, the tax on a holiday in the UK is already more expensive than our peers.
When it was put to him that mayors would not have to introduce this tax, Simpson accepted that. But he went on:
We know that local government is struggling for funds. It was hit very hard by austerity. And if you only devolve one tax-raising power, of course local mayors are going to pull that lever till it snaps.
If it’s a 5% tax, which is entirely possible, that’s what it is in Edinburgh – but that’s lower than it is in, say, Aberdeen – the economic analysis is that it’s 33,000 jobs which will go.
Simpson said UK Hospitality was able to come up with a specific figure because the sector could measure quite precisely what impact price has on demand. He also claimed taxes on the hospitality sector were already very high.
Simpson went on:
For anyone who takes a holiday in the UK, it’s going to be an average of about £100, £120, on the cost of a family holiday, which is more than double the benefit from the energy VAT cut that we saw earlier in the year. So it is not going to be painless.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: NHS England publishes its monthly hospital performance figures.
9.30am: The actor Michael Sheen gives evidence to the Commons Welsh affairs committee about contaminated land, a topic he investigated for a highly-praised documentary.
Morning: Angela Rayner, the communities secretary, chairs a meeting with regional mayors from No 10 North to discuss plans for a tourism tax. Later Lucy Powell, the education secretary, hosts a summit there on making England a “technical education superpower”.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
After 11.30am: Wes Streeting, the defence secretary, is due to make a statement to MPs about Ukraine and the threat from Russia.
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