The government has today announced a £16m grant to help pay for millions of meals for the vulnerable in England over the winter period. The funding, from the Department for the Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs, will go to the food redistribution charity FareShare which to provide food to at least 4,000 frontline charities.
The funding is being paid through Defra’s winter support programme – part of the wider government winter support package which aims to help those who are vulnerable and disproportionately impacted by Covid-19 to access healthy and nutritious food , starting this week.
Lindsay Boswell, the chief executive of FareShare, said:
In England alone we have delivered food equivalent to over 57m meals since 23 March. We welcome the government’s further financial support on behalf of the 4,000 plus charities we provide food to in England, who in turn created over 3m meals a week to help their clients at the height of the first lockdown.
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Results of the internal SNP elections that took place at the weekend’s conference may not make headlines, but they tell an interesting story about the position of ordinary members of some of the key challenges facing the party.
On Friday, the Guardian reported that calls to democratise SNP structures were coalescing around moves by the party’s Common Weal group to elect a slate of candidates on to the party’s national executive committee who want to give ordinary members a greater say in policy and decision-making.
In the end, only four of the Common Weal group’s 29 candidates were unsuccessful: they won 13 seats of the 29 available at NEC level and on the policy committee won nine out of 20 seats.
SNP CWG Convener Craig Berry said:
Ordinary SNP members across Scotland are the backbone of our party. In this weekend’s elections they have made their voices heard – and the message is clear: they want change. They want a role in the governance of our party. They want more say on our policy direction. And they want action on independence now.
Elsewhere, Craig Murray, the former diplomat who is being prosecuted for alleged contempt of court in his blogging about the Salmond trial, has told the National that he received a quarter of votes for SNP president, a honorary role which was taken by the constitutional affairs secretary, Michael Russell, last night.
Murray stood on a platform to deliver independence within two years, and told the National that overall the NEC results reflected grassroots’ concern that “a powerful clique” was neglecting the drive for independence.
If it is indeed the case that one in four of those delegates eligible to vote backed him, is raises significant questions about how SNP members feel about current referendum strategy, and also the Scottish government’s handling of the ongoing Salmond inquiry.
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Scotland’s main economics thinktank, the Fraser of Allander Institute, has challenged Nicola Sturgeon’s claims only the UK government can prevent Scotland’s health and social care workers losing money on a £500 Covid bonus.
The first minister announced yesterday that 391,000 Scottish NHS and social care staff would get a one-off £500 bonus because of their work and sacrifice during the Covid pandemic, at a cost of about £180m.
But her attempts to politicise that gift by calling on Boris Johnson’s government to make it tax free, claiming the Scottish government did not have the powers to do so, was rejected last night by the Treasury.
The Treasury said that since the Scottish government itself would recoup all the income tax paid by recipients, Sturgeon could simply increase the bonus to ensure staff got the full £500 in their wage packets.
The FAI said this was correct: the Scottish government would get that income tax back, although not until 2023/24, because of the way its funding is structured. The FAI pointed out, however, recipients would still have to pay £60 in national insurance contributions on that £500 – cash which flows to the Treasury.
The FAI blog, co-written by its analyst David Eiser and by Prof Graeme Roy, formerly head of Alex Salmond’s policy unit, added, however, that making bonuses tax-free was generally regarded as a bad idea. It was not a progressive policy, it said, and would breach the social contract the tax system upheld. They said:
There’s a reason bonuses are taxed; if they weren’t, everyone would want to be paid in bonuses rather than regular pay. Making an exception to the rule once opens the possibility of endless future lobbying for tax-exempt bonuses – which is not something any government should be keen to encourage.
More importantly, exempting bonuses from tax appears at odds with the context of the existing progressive tax system. If NHS workers received an extra £500 in normal pay, higher rate taxpayers would pay more of that in tax than basic rate taxpayers – that’s the basis of fairness on which the system is based.
Exempting the bonus from tax would gift higher rate taxpayers a significantly larger tax break than basic rate taxpayers. It is really not clear what the rationale for this would be.
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