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** 07 September 2021
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** UK
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** Boris Johnson set to raise national insurance to fund social care overhaul (#1)
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** Opinion: Social care reform should focus on wellbeing, not property (#2)
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** New DCN director appointed (#3)
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** International
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** US: FDA nears day of reckoning on e-cigarettes (#4)
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** Former EU commissioner to face bribery charges linked to €60 million tobacco scandal (#5)
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** Parliamentary Activity
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** Parliamentary questions (#6)
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** UK
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**
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** Boris Johnson is expected to raise national insurance by about 1.2% to pay for a pledge to end the “catastrophic costs” of social care. Tory MPs claim the move amounts to a £10 billion tax raid. It comes as the prime minister is planning a major launch later today of a long-awaited shake-up which he claims will fulfil a pledge he made when he became prime minister two years ago to “fix the broken care system.”

The national insurance hike will also help fund a major drive to clear the massive backlog in NHS operations and treatment caused by COVID, which has seen waiting lists soar to over five million. The extra cash for the NHS will be targeted on boosting capacity in hospitals amid predictions that the backlog could more than double to 13 million people on waiting lists by the end of this year.

It is understood the new social care plan will involve a cap on how much an individual will pay of around £86,000. For residential care homes, this may not include accommodation costs.

It is also believed the prime minister will announce that the threshold for people to start paying for their care - currently if you have assets of £23,350 - will rise to around £100,000. This would protect more people from having to pay. Meanwhile, it is expected that pensioners in work will also have to pay the new sum, despite people being exempt from national insurance payments after reaching state pension age.

The social care reform proposals will apply to England only, but tax changes will affect the whole of the UK.

Source: Sky News, 7 September 2021

See also: The Guardian - Boris Johnson faces growing red wall rebellion over social care tax rises ([link removed])
BBC News - Social care reform plans facing Tory tax backlash ([link removed])
HSJ - Government set to confirm funding plan for NHS and care ([link removed])
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** The Local Government Chronicle’s Editor Nick Golding writes that much of the debate
around the social care reform fails to recognise that dignity and quality of life for both social care’s recipients and workforce should be the primary driving force for reform

Golding notes that the media have disproportionately presented “ending the perceived unfairness of pensioners having to sell their homes to fund the costs of care” as the primary aim of the reform – rather than addressing the crisis in care. This obscures the reality that many people with care needs, their carers, and the social care workforce are being failed by the “inadequacy of our current care system.”

Golding highlights the urgent need to develop a proper funding plan for social care to address the challenges posed by “austerity’s disproportionate targeting of councils, the ageing population, and the rapid expansion in the number of working-age persons with severe physical or mental disabilities.”

He highlights that the plan under discussion to fund reforms by increasing national insurance will disproportionately affect the working population and be felt by those on lower incomes. He states that there is a lack of respect for the social care profession, which is frequently paid minimum wage for an essential job, and there is a “crisis for providers, who find the sector unsustainable after a decade of austerity-ravaged councils having no choice but to bargain contracts down to the bare minimum.”

Golding says that the new social care funding should be used to make long-term, bold investments in social care services the care workforce to improve the quality and sustainability of services.

Source: Local Government Chronicle, 6 September 2021
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** The District Councils Network (DCN) has appointed a former civil servant at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) as its new director.

James Hood, previously co-director of housing strategy and markets at MHCLG, will start the role on Monday (6 September) for DCN - a cross-party member-led network of 183 councils and a special interest group of the Local Government Association.

He replaces Nick Porter, who is leaving to return to work at the LGA, where he was a senior adviser for housing and planning before joining DCN in 2019. Mr Hood has held several other senior roles at MHCLG in housing and building safety, including head of local authority housing policy. He has also previously worked at the Ministry of Justice and the Treasury.

Source: Local Government Chronicle, 3 September 2021
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** International
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**
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** The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is reviewing millions of applications from e-cigarette makers and must decide by 9 September whether their products are “appropriate for the protection of public health.”

The FDA has already blocked the sale of 55,000 flavoured vape products from three companies that did not meet the standard. Until now, makers of e-cigarettes had operated free of many of the restrictions on sales and marketing created to regulate traditional tobacco products like cigarettes. But the FDA has come under increasing pressure from politicians and public health groups in recent years to limit the sale of vapes, mainly over concerns about the products’ popularity with teenagers.

The agency has already said it is considering major changes. The FDA announced in April that it planned to release a proposal within a year to ban menthol cigarettes and flavoured cigars — products disproportionately used by African Americans and teens.

The agency is also reportedly considering whether to seek limits on nicotine levels in cigarettes to reduce their addictive potential. Similar concerns about addictive potential and risks to young people lie at the heart of the FDA’s imminent verdict on vapes.

The FDA, which has said it will likely miss the 9th of September deadline for some applications, is prioritising its review queue based on applicants’ market share.

Source: Politico, 7 September 2021
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**
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** Former European Commissioner John Dalli is set to face charges over an attempt by his aide to reverse a ban on snus, a form of smokeless tobacco, in a bribe worth €60 million in 2012, prompting the official to resign.

Dalli, formerly served as the European commissioner for health, will appear before the court on September 17 2021, over claims of his involvement in a multimillion-euro bribery scandal with a Swedish tobacco company, Swedish Match.

The bribery charges in question link back to Dalli’s aide, Silvio Zammit, who had allegedly tried to obtain a €60 million bribe from Swedish Match to reverse the European Union’s ban on snus in 2012. The sale of snus has been banned in the European Union since 1992, except in Sweden.

Brussels’ Anti-Fraud office was subsequently required to investigate the allegations. The results of the five-month investigation found that there were “a number of unambiguous and converging circumstantial evidences gathered in the course of the investigation” that suggested Dalli was aware of the bribery attempts, yet did not stop them, forcing him to hand in his resignation.

Source: RT News, 6 September 2021
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** Parliamentary Activity
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**
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** PQ1: Smoking

Asked by Mark Pawsey, Rugby

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential implications for his policies of the findings of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Vaping's inquiry into the UK Tobacco Harm Reduction Opportunities Post-Brexit: Achieving a Smoke-Free 2030.

Answered by Jo Churchill, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care

This publication will be considered alongside a wide range of evidence to inform the Government's policy on the role of e-cigarettes in helping smokers quit smoking.

Source: Hansard, 6 September 2021
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** PQ 2-3: Tobacco (Grouped questions)

Asked by Mr David Jones, Clwyd West

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department's next review of e-cigarettes and other novel nicotine delivery systems will be conducted by the Office for Health Promotion; when that review will be published; and whether that review will include a chapter on heated tobacco.

Asked by Mr David Jones, Clwyd West

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether Public Health England will provide this Department with (a) an Authoritative Assessment and (b) the eighth evidence review on relative harms of nicotine delivery products in 2022.

Answered by Jo Churchill, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care

The Department does not recognise the term ‘Authoritative Assessment'. The next iteration of Vaping in England was commissioned by Public Health England in 2020 and is being conducted by an international panel of tobacco control experts led by King's College London. This will be the eighth evidence review and it will cover the relative harms of nicotine delivery products.

The report will include a summary of the Cochrane Collaboration's systematic review of the health effects of heated tobacco products and analysis of data on patterns of use. It is expected that this will be published in March 2022 by the Office for Health Promotion, following its launch on 1 October 2021.

Source: Hansard, 6 September 2021
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