The prime minister has announced a new health and social care tax will be introduced across the UK to pay for reforms to the care sector and NHS funding in England. The tax will begin as a 1.25 percentage point rise in National Insurance from April 2022, paid by both employers and workers, and will then become a separate tax on earned income from 2023. The proceeds from the tax will lead to £12bn a year being raised, the prime minister says, with the majority going into catching up on the backlog in the NHS created by Covid. This will include things like increasing hospital capacity and creating space for nine million more appointments, scans and operations. But Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer says the plan is a "sticking plaster".