Sunak says the tax plans are fair, honest and "not a stealth tax".

He says they are legally ring-fenced with every pound going direct to health and social care.

No government wants to raise taxes, he says, but these are "extraordinary times and we face extraordinary circumstances".

He says the principle that the NHS is free at the point of use and funded by general taxation has wide support.

"If we are serious about defending this principle in a post-Covid world we have to be honest about the costs that brings," he says.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak says there are three reasons why taxes had to rise.

He says they need to fund the NHS recovery.

"To get everyone the care they need is going to take time and it is going to take money," he says.

Secondly, he says that the social care plans are an expanded safety net and "a permanent new role for the government" that needs a permanent form of funding.

Lastly, he says they need to fund the government's vision for health and social care, including a pay rise for nurses, more equipment, preparations for the next pandemic and upskilling social care workers.

Boris Johnson says the new limits on care costs will allow society to "share the risks" of "catastrophic costs" incurred by those who find themselves in long-term care.

He adds the government could not "in good conscience" fund the changes through more borrowing - as this would pass on the costs to future generations.

The changes, he adds, "should have been done a long time ago".

The prime minister turns to his tax hike to pay for the changes.

He says the 1.25 percentage point increase in National Insurance means the costs will be split "as fairly as possible" between people and business.

He says a new tax is needed as it would be unfair to fund the changes by "cheeseparing" government departmental budgets elsewhere.

He adds around half of the money raised by the new "health and social care levy" will come from the top 14% of earners.

Boris Johnson opens the press conference, saying the plans detailed today will help the government fix problems with health and social care "avoided for decades".

He says he wants to "level with people", however, that NHS waiting lists "will get worse before they get better".

Reality Check

The Health and Social Care Levy, announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, is funded by a tax rise - based on higher National Insurance contributions.

The new tax will also apply to people who are above the state pension age but are still working.

At the moment, pensioners do not pay National Insurance, although there are some exceptions for the self-employed.

So, how many could the changes affect?

According to the ONS, during the period January to December 2020, there were 1.3 million employed pensioners aged 65 and over in the UK (about 10% of pensioners).

In England, there were 1.1 million – with about 410,000 of these working full-time and 688,000 part-time.

The prime minister is due to hold a press conference in a few minutes.

He will be flanked by the Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid.

This morning they visited a care home in east London, ahead of the PM's statement in the Commons announcing a new health and social care levy.

We'll bring you full coverage of their press conference as it happens.

Do stay with us.

Image source, PA Media

Image source, PA Media

Image source, PA Media

Image source, PA Media

Image source, Sophie Wareham

Sophie Wareham, 28, from Dorset, works as a carer in the community, often working from 7am to 11pm.

She tells BBC Newsbeat that things are “far worse” than when she started 10 years ago - and that the situation is “only going to get worse”.

And that’s because “there just aren’t enough carers”.

“The NHS doesn’t want people staying in hospital so people are being sent home - but there’s no one to look after them at home so they struggle on their own. And then they’re sent back to hospital. It’s a cycle that could be stopped if the funding was for community care or care homes.”

Sophie says she understands why money is being given to the NHS because of the backlogs in appointments and operations. But she says social care needs money “immediately” too.

“At the moment, there just aren’t enough of us to help.”

Significant tax rise, and a big choice for the governmentpublished at 15:34 British Summer Time 7 September 2021

15:34 BST 7 September 2021

Faisal Islam
BBC Economics Editor

This is a very significant tax rise, with little precedent outside of a Budget.

It doesn’t just break a manifesto promise, it drives a JCB through it, with £11.4 billion a year in extra taxes that were the subject of a “tax guarantee” that they would not go up.

The March Budget of this year was already the most significant tax raising Budget since 1993.

But a once in a lifetime pandemic recession and associated long lasting damage to the NHS does provide some rationale for thinking about the appropriateness of promises made in very different circumstances.

Among workers the money will be raised in a ‘progressive fashion’ unlike say a VAT rise, with the highest earners paying the most.

However some very low earners, including some on the cusp of losing £1,000 in annual universal credit payments, will face higher tax bills of £100.

And it is pretty clear that one of the rationales here is to be able to present a National Insurance increase of 1.25% as lower than the 2% rise in income tax that would have been required to raise such funds.

The argument is almost entirely presentational, and relies on a general public lack of familiarity with how National Insurance works.

The tax rise on working is effectively 2.5%, with the direct burden shared between workers and their bosses. As the Treasury acknowledges however, firms may reduce wages, or raise prices to pay the extra bill.

So this is the big choice from the government.

The prize is that pensioners can have certainty about the cost of social care, and the least well off will have it paid for.

The cost might have been pushed at, for example, the inflating value of homes, especially at the point of their being inherited.

The cost could have been levied more evenly on all forms of income from savings to pensions through income taxes.

Instead, with some tweaks to apply it to those over the age of 66 from 2023, it will go on workers and work. It used to be called a “jobs tax”.

The hope is by earmarking it for health and care and separating out this levy on all tax bills, that the public won't mind.

Image source, Getty Images

Some business groups have criticised the government's plans for a new health and social care tax pay for social care costs in England.

The tax will begin as a 1.25% rise in National Insurance for employees and employers from April 2022.

It will then become a separate tax on earned income from 2023 - appearing on an employee's payslip.

The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) said it would "be a drag anchor on jobs growth" as firms emerge from the pandemic and furlough winds down.

Manufacturing trade group Make UK's boss also described its introduction as "ill-timed as well as illogical".

And the Institute of Directors says the plan demonstrated a lack of understanding of the difficulties small business owners face.

The group's chief economist Kitty Ussher, added: "The surprise new tax on dividends will yet again target small company directors.

"Incorporated sole traders and other owner-managers, who relied on dividend income, were the only group of workers that were not supported by government during the pandemic," she said, referring to those who were not entitled to special funding schemes during the pandemic.

Read more in our story here

It will take the health service years to catch uppublished at 15:13 British Summer Time 7 September 2021

15:13 BST 7 September 2021

Nick Triggle
Health Correspondent

It is easy to understand why more money was needed for health and care.

The Covid pandemic has had a huge toll on the NHS, requiring an overhaul of how services are run, and creating a growing backlog in care.

Even with this money, it will take the health service years to catch up.

The case for social care predates the pandemic. Governments have been dodging reform of the system since the late 1990s so the changes are being welcomed.

But the introduction of a cap only solves one part of the problem – protecting people’s assets when they face catastrophic costs.

You will still need to be eligible for care to benefit from the cap. Access is rationed so only the most frail qualify - more than half of the requests for help are currently turned down.

Failure to address this means people could still find themselves paying thousands of pounds a month for care that does not even count towards the cap.

Edith Monk tries to lead as normal and active a life as possible, despite being severely physically disabled with multiple sclerosis.

Edith, now 34, was diagnosed at 16 but still achieved her qualifications and works part-time as an accountant with a major retailer.

Agency carers come to Edith's flat in Hitchin every morning to get her up so she can go to work - and again in the evenings to put her to bed.

She describes her current agency as "really good" but they are her fourth in five years because the others struggled to find staff.

Twice, social services have told her she would have to quit her job and go into a home because there were no local agencies able to meet her needs. Another time, they said carers could only get her up at 10:00 and put her to bed at 18:00, again making it impossible for her to go to work.

In her experience, the system is "really difficult, really fragile, really quite scary actually", while the NHS "feels quite safe and solid".

"I use and I need both health care and social care, but if one doesn't work, it impacts on the other."

Edith fears ministers will focus on older people needing a few years of care at the expense of long-term disabled people like herself, needing care "for five or six decades".

Instead, "real reform" should make social care free of charge to anyone who needs it, she says, with services integrated into the NHS so users and their families no longer have to "navigate all those private providers".

"Everyone is one accident, one illness away from needing social care, and you don't realise until you need it how vulnerable the system is."

The government will scrap the "triple lock" mechanism that ensures state pensions rise by at least inflation, wage growth, or 2.5%, whichever is the highest, for the 2022/23 financial year.

Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey told MPs that the temporary, one-year change would mean pensions would rise by 2.5% or in line with inflation next year.

Last month, the Bank of England said it was expecting inflation to peak at 4%.

Without the change, the state pension would have risen by over 8% due to exceptional changes in wages in part due to the furlough scheme.

The one-year adjustment will be introduced for 2022/23 only, she said, with the triple lock restored the following year.

Labour's Andrew Gwynne says social care can't be fixed until local authorities are helped, saying £15bn has been taken out of the budgets of local councils, many of which are in the least affluent areas.

He appeals to Boris Johnson to offer reassurance to those local authorities.

The PM says there has in fact been a record increase in spending power of local authorities, adding that Health Secretary Sajid Javid will set out what the government would be doing for local authorities later.

Leader of the House of Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg has confirmed that MPs will vote on the prime minister's plan to pay for health and social care on Wednesday.

Rees-Mogg indicated that the debate could take the whole of the Commons day - which would mean a vote at 19:00 BST.

Labour said that by holding the vote so soon, the government was trying to "bounce" MPs into accepting the changes.

Reality Check

In announcing the Health and Social Care Levy (which will be based on higher National Insurance contributions), Boris Johnson acknowledged that “this breaks a manifesto commitment, which is not something I do lightly but a global pandemic was in no-one’s manifesto”.

In the foreword to the 2019 Conservative manifesto, Johnson said: "We will not raise the rate of income tax, VAT or National Insurance."

But this isn’t the first time he has broken a specific policy promise he has made.

One example is the foreign aid budget.

The 2019 Conservative manifesto promised to “proudly maintain our commitment to spend 0.7% of GNI (gross national income) on development”. But the government, despite significant criticism from its own backbenches, has cut development spending to 0.5% of GNI.

The difference between the two figures is estimated to be about £4bn.

The government says the reduction is temporary and it will be reversed, but only when certain conditions are met.

Another example is a commitment on Northern Ireland made during the 2019 general election campaign.

Johnson told a press conference in December 2019 there would be no checks on goods moving in either direction between Great Britain and Northern Ireland as a result of the Northern Ireland Brexit Protocol that he negotiated with the EU.

That hasn’t been the case. There are numerous checks – as the text of the Protocol said there would be. In fact, there would be far more if a series of grace periods had not been introduced.

The grace periods have delayed some checks, such as those on food products heading to supermarkets in Northern Ireland.

Peter Saull
BBC Political Reporter

Under Boris Johnson's plan, your payslip will feature a Health and Social Care Levy from 2023 onwards.

This is the 1.25% rise in National Insurance, rebranded to underline that the money will be ringfenced for the health and care system.

You may well have seen something similar on your council tax bill.

Local authorities in England have been able to raise extra money through an "adult social care precept" since 2015.

In effect, though, the prime minister is creating a brand new tax.

The idea of a specific "NHS and care tax" is something that may well be more palatable to voters.

And future occupants of Number 10 could struggle to justify getting rid of it.

A question now from Conservative MP Sir Christopher Chope who asks if there hadn't been a pandemic, how would the government have paid for this plan without raising taxes (as was promised in the Conservative manifesto).

Boris Johnson says the cost of the pandemic has impacted on our health and social care systems which, he says, are "intimately related".

"The best way to put them both on a sound footing for the future is to put them together," he adds.

Away from the Commons, there's been some early reaction to the government's proposals.

Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), has said National Insurance is "not the right" tax to increase to pay for social care reforms.

The economist tells BBC Radio 4's World At One programme: "We always knew we were going to need tax rises during this decade to pay for health and social care.

"This is not the right tax rise - income tax would be better, some other ones would have been better.

"It is not a terrible one. It is broad-based, the higher earners will pay more than lower earners.

"If you had to do something with income tax, National Insurance or VAT, it would have been better if it had been something which impacted all generations similarly, it would be better if it affected people with rental income and so on.

"But if you're going to raise an extra £12 billion, which this looks like it will, it is not so bad."

It's worth noting that NI will only increase in the coming financial year. From 2023, a new and separate Health and Social Care Levy will be used to pay for the reforms.

Labour's shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth says while he welcomes more money for the NHS, his party will be studying the details "carefully".

He argues the NHS crisis isn't just about the number of people waiting for treatment delayed by the pandemic.

He says it is also about staff such as midwives leaving the health service, an absence of health checks against the risk of strokes and heart disease; cancer survival rates and mental health - and that the government's plan needs to address these issues.

Ashworth adds he is "concerned" Boris Johnson has "broken his personal promise" to the British people by putting up the rate of National Insurance.

"That means a nurse, a midwife, a careworker will be paying more in tax to fund a social care system from 2023 - a cap - that will not fix the deep-rooted problems in social care.

"It's not a care cap it's a care con," he says.