Newspaper headlines: NHS budget warning and Hunt 'to keep fuel tax cut'

Real-terms funding for NHS England is set to fall by 1.2% in the next financial year, according to a new study

A variety of stories lead Tuesday's papers. Many of them speculate on what will be in the chancellor's budget and agree on one point: that fuel duty is to be frozen for a 14th year.

The Financial Times says some Conservative MPs believe Jeremy Hunt will unveil an even bigger prize, a 2p cut in the basic rate of income tax. The paper says it's been told that "Number Ten wants to do income tax" because polling shows it would be more popular than cuts to national insurance.

The Times, though, says a reduction in national insurance contributions is the most likely giveaway - paid for by taxes rising and savings in public expenditure. The paper says Mr Hunt will argue that central government and local authorities need to do more with less, and that there could be a potential cut in planned government spending after the general election.

The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Express are among the papers reporting that the chancellor will give local councils until July to produce plans to improve performance and reduce wasteful spending. The Express says there'll be a crack down on "woke" local council roles, related to what the paper calls "discredited equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives".

According to the Daily Mail, the NHS will miss out on extra funding and there'll be no new money for defence. The paper also says the chancellor is likely to raise a string of smaller taxes, which could include extending the windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas, a new tax on vaping, coupled with higher tax on smoking and raising air passenger duty on business flights.

The Guardian leads with a study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies which predicts that - when inflation is taken into account - funding for NHS England will fall by 1.2% in the next financial year. The analysis suggests the NHS could be forced to cut staff, pay or patient services - or all three.

Several papers report on the fallout from a German leak which included highly confidential British information. The head of the German air force, Ingo Gerhartz, was heard in a call intercepted by Russia discussing the presence of British personnel in Ukraine. According to the Sun, the British government is "livid" because the remarks were made on an unencrypted video chat. The Telegraph says a former German intelligence chief has warned that the leak could be "just the tip of the iceberg".

And the Times says a study by University College London has found a worrying increase in the number of young people who are smoking tobacco in cigars and pipes, rather than in the form of cigarettes. Over the past decade, the number of people aged 18-24 who say they exclusively smoke cigars or pipes has increased five-fold to more than 770,000. The researchers say the trend could be linked to the rising level of vaping in young people, with electronic cigarettes prompting experimentation with other nicotine products.

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