Countries pledge millions to plug hole left by US "global gag rule"

Countries have pledged tens of millions for family planning schemes in developing countries to plug a gap left by Donald Trump’s ban on US funding to groups linked to abortion.

About 50 governments are attending the hastily convened She Decides conference in Brussels on Thursday, with early pledges closing in on $ 100m (£80m).

Sweden and Finland each promised €20m to compensate for the reinstated “global gag’ rule”, which bans US funding for NGOs that provide abortion or information on the procedure to women in developing countries.

The UK has sent the international development minister, Rory Stewart, to the one-day conference, but it remains unclear if the government will announce a financial contribution.

Organisers hope to raise $ 600m. “This is not a conference against the American administration; this is a conference for something,” Sweden’s deputy prime minister, Isabella Lövin, told the Guardian.

“We are expressing our strong support for women’s rights, for the progress that has been made. Access to contraceptives and sexual reproduction is a vehicle for development and the eradication of poverty.”

In an executive order signed last month, Trump reinstated the global gag rule, a US aid policy Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan in 1984 have imposed but their Democrat counterparts have lifted.

Sweden’s international development minister cited evidence from the World Health Organization showing that, under George W Bush’s presidency, the rule increased abortions and maternal deaths from unsafe terminations. “This is something we can prevent,” she said.

Alexander De Croo, Belgium’s deputy prime minister, told the Associated Press: “This should not be a moment where we are taking steps back into the dark ages.”

Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway have pledged $ 10m each, with further contributions expected to be announced by other wealthy countries.

A government spokeswoman was unable to confirm whether he would announce any financial contribution from the UK.

The Department for International Development has previously described the UK as a global leader on family planning. It points to “a major international summit this summer to secure commitments that increase access to family planning services for women and girls in the world’s poorest and most fragile countries”.

Other wealthy countries are expected to announce donations. Canada’s minister of international development, Marie Claude Bibeau, said: “Women’s rights begin with their right to control their bodies. We should never take that away from them, especially for young adolescents. Canada is proud to stand with its partners and will always stand up for women’s rights everywhere.”

Afghanistan, Chad and Ethiopia are among the developing countries sending representatives to the conference, where they are expected to give evidence on how funding for family planning makes a difference to women’s lives.

Organisers have also expressed hope that US foundations may get involved by contributing funds. While the conference has been warmly welcomed by NGOs, some have voiced fears the money cannot be raised quickly enough to fill the shortfall left by Trump’s executive order.

Lövin expressed hope of hitting the target, but said Thursday’s conference was only the first step.

Sweden’s deputy PM, Isabella Lövin, signs bill seen as a parody of Donald Trump signing the ‘global gag’ order. Photograph: Johan Schiff/EPA

The Swedish deputy prime minister made headlines last month when she appeared to parody Trump and the all-male lineup in the Oval Office that signed the global gag order.

Lövin, who is also environment minister, tweeted a picture of herself and female colleagues, as she signed Sweden’s climate law.

But she brushed aside questions she was mocking Trump and his administration, saying: “The message was not that we were only women in that picture; the message was that we are taking leadership when it comes to tackling climate change.

“This was my staff and myself and my state secretaries and I was signing a bill and that’s all.”

Countries pledge millions to plug hole left by US "global gag rule"

IFS warns of steep cuts and tax rises to fill £40bn black hole

The government is on course to impose steep cuts in public spending from April and increase taxes by the end of the decade to their highest level as a share of national income since 1986–87 to combat the UK’s persistent budget deficit.

But slower economic growth following the Brexit vote will still leave the UK with one of the largest black holes in public spending in the developed world, meaning the next government must find £40bn to eliminate the budget deficit in the next parliament, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

“For all the focus on Brexit the public finances in the next few years look set to be defined by the spending cuts announced by George Osborne,” said IFS director Paul Johnson.

“Cuts to day-to-day public service spending are due to accelerate while the tax burden continues to rise. Even so the new chancellor may not find it all that easy to meet his target of eliminating the budget deficit in the next parliament.

“Even on central forecasts that is going to require extending austerity towards the mid-2020s. If the economy does less well than hoped then we may see yet another set of fiscal rules consigned to the dustbin.”

The leading tax and spending thinktank said downgrades in GDP growth over the next four years will strain the public finances, which are already on course to be £13bn worse off in this financial year than forecast, after weak growth in tax receipts.

Highlighting the pressure on the chancellor, Philip Hammond, the IFS’s annual assessment of the public finances found that Britain’s ageing population and increasing demands on the NHS will blow a large hole in the government budget over the next two parliaments.

It said: “Demographic and non-demographic pressures are projected to put upward pressure of 1% of national income on health, social care and pension spending by 2025.

“Taking into account possible negative effects from lower growth, the government may need to enact further measures worth £40bn (in 2016–17 terms) in order to eliminate the deficit in the next parliament,” the report said.

Deep cuts in welfare benefits are due to take effect from April alongside cost cutting in Whitehall department budgets. Yet the government still plans to pay for large giveaways in the form of a higher income tax personal allowance at the basic and higher rate and was expected to maintain freezes on fuel duty that totalled £4.5bn a year.

The IFS said the promised spending and slower growth would force the government to implement tougher austerity, even though the chancellor has abandoned his predecessor’s pledge for a budget surplus by 2020.

It said: “Real levels of day-to-day public service spending have actually fallen very little overall in the last three years. The rate of reduction is set to speed up after this year, with cuts of nearly 4% due between 2016–17 and 2019– 20.

“In addition, tax is rising as a share of national income and by 2019–20 is due to reach its highest level since 1986–87.”

It said a deficit in 2016-17 of 3.5% of GDP, or £68.2bn, was £12.7bn higher than the Office for Budget Responsibility, the Treasury’s independent forecaster, had predicted in March 2016.

“This increase was not a result of a downgrade to the forecast for economic growth, but arose as a result of weak growth in tax receipts – in particular, income tax, National Insurance contributions (NICs) and stamp duty land tax – and faster growth in local authority spending,” it said.

Hammond said in the autumn statement last year that he plans to boost public investment spending beyond pre-crisis levels as a proportion of overall public spending, with much of the extra cash to be spent on transport infrastructure.

However, many departments will need to make further savings on day-to-day spending by the end of the parliament.

The IFS said: “Public spending, especially on health, pensions and overseas aid will be higher as a share of national income than in 2007–08, while spending on schools, defence and (in particular) public order and safety will be lower.”

IFS warns of steep cuts and tax rises to fill £40bn black hole

Labour considers raising national insurance coverage to fix £30bn NHS "black hole"

Andy Burnham is mentioned to be concerned about asking people in function to pay out far more for the fees of individuals previously retired. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

Radical plans to boost national insurance coverage contributions to plug a looming £30bn a yr “black hole” in NHS funding and pay out the spiralling fees of care for the elderly are currently being examined by Labour’s policy evaluation.

The Observer has learnt that the concept is among options getting regarded to ensure NHS and care fees can be met beneath a potential Labour government, with out it getting to impose crippling cuts on other providers in successive budgets.

Senior party figures have confirmed that a scheme advanced by the former Labour minister Frank Discipline – underneath which money from increased NI would be paid into a sealed-off fund for health and care costs – is getting examined, even though no decisions have been taken.

Latest figures based mostly on information from NHS England and the Nuffield Believe in and created by the Commons library recommend that NHS costs alone will go from £95bn a 12 months now to a lot more than £130bn a year by 2020.

Discipline, who has discussed his ideas with the shadow wellness secretary, Andy Burnham, and the chair of the policy evaluation, Jon Cruddas, argues that with out drastic action the NHS will not survive in something like its existing type. He believes that folks would accept the concept of contributing added to the NHS, the most well-known public support, if they had been guaranteed that the additional income would be spent solely on overall health and social care.

“Labour desperately demands two or 3 big suggestions to capture the imagination and this need to be one,” Discipline explained. “In no way can we have anything at all like the NHS we have now if we are working such a large deficit each and every yr. We have to consider about the 2nd phase of the daily life of the NHS. It has to be reborn. Otherwise it will be unsustainable in a few years’ time.”

The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, is under growing stress from some in his shadow cabinet to create radical, eyecatching policies as the economic climate improves and the election nears.

Some senior party figures say NI increases to save the NHS in its present kind would demonstrate the celebration is fiscally responsible and totally free folks from the nervousness that they may well have to promote their homes to spend for care in previous age.

Burnham, while keen to discover radical choices, is wary of rising NI in a way that would imply younger people in work possessing to spend the care expenses of those currently of pensionable age.

For the elderly, he favours other choices like a strategy floated by Labour ahead of the last election for a levy of ten% to 15% on people’s estates after death to shell out care charges. But NI rises for the rest of the population are currently being deemed as a feasible long-term resolution.

To handle Burnham’s considerations, Field proposes that individuals now in excess of pension age would be asked to carry on to shell out NI if they needed cost-free care. Otherwise they would have to pay out beneath the recent system.

Although the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, is noticed as a prospective obstacle, it was his ally Gordon Brown who in 2002 launched a 1% hike in NI to fund the biggest ever boost in well being funding – a move that proved remarkably common.

Discipline says an NI rise of one% would plug the fast “black hole”. Further contributions thereafter would go into a devoted fund that would be run as a mutual with elected members negotiating every year’s contributions.

A spokesman for Burnham said: “The issues of the ageing society are so wonderful that the debate about how to meet them demands to be open to new considering, as prolonged as it is constant with the enduring values of the NHS.

“Proper now, we are seeing large cuts to social care foremost to ever-better hospitalisation of older individuals. That is no response to the ageing society. There can be no lengthy-phrase resolution for the NHS with out also a sustainable remedy for social care.”

Labour is presently committed to combining the budgets for health and social care. Critics of the existing program say there is no incentive for social solutions to try out to hold old individuals out of hospital, due to the fact hospital charges come from a various budget.

NHS expenses are growing rapidly due to the fact of an increasing elderly population and the rising charges of new technologies, therapies and medicines.

Labour considers raising national insurance coverage to fix £30bn NHS "black hole"