With the government announcing that NHS staff will receive a 3% pay rise this year at a cost of around £1.5 billion, questions are inevitably being raised over how the government plans to pay for it. Considering then-Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the previously planned 1% rise was “what we think is affordable”, there’s clearly some explaining to do…

This morning The Times claims it’s likely to come from a rise in national insurance that was initially intended to fund the elusive new social care plan (albeit dressed up as “a new health and social care tax”, rather than just a manifesto-busting national insurance hike). Yet when asked about this by host Kay Burley on Sky News today, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng kept mum:

“We’re going to pay for it through general taxation, as we pay for everything…I don’t see how we could increase national insurance, but you know, things have been very flexible over the last eighteen months. We’ve lived through an unprecedented time, we’ve spent a huge amount of money that we never thought was possible.”

It’s a running theme of this week for ministers to dodge these kind of questions…