Key events

The mayor of London’s announcement of financial support to ease the impact of the ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) has “not touched the sides”, Caulfield says.

It emerged on Thursday that Sadiq Khan would expand the grant scheme to cover any household with a heavily polluting car or motorbike, spending an extra £50m after intense pressure over the political fallout of the plan. But Caulfield has told Sky News:

I don’t think it touched the sides of people’s concerns. I think he’s reacting to why Labour didn’t win the Uxbridge by-election. £2,000 is nothing if you’re having to replace your car.

The Conservatives have been emboldened in their opposition to Ulez, as with their recent shifting commitment to many green initiatives, by their narrow victory in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip byelection, where analysis has suggested the issue was key.

And the party’s candidate for London mayor Susan Hall has said the new financial support is a “waste of taxpayers’ money”. She has told LBC:

I would stop the Ulez expansion on day one of a new mayoralty, this is too little, it’s too late.

The grants aren’t insufficient as prices for used cars and vans have gone up and the expansion in eligibility doesn’t come into effect until a week before the Ulez.

I mean it’s totally unacceptable and given that his own impact assessment says it will make virtually no difference at all, what a waste of taxpayers’ money, £160 million.

Instead of taxing everybody in outer London he could have put that money towards where we’ve got pockets of pollution.

NHS waiting lists will rise further in the coming months, Caulfield says. She has told LBC she could not promise lists would fall from 7.47 million, admitting the number is likely to continue to climb.

We probably expect, in all honesty, for it to peak in the next few months. We’re almost at the peak but we think it will go slightly higher. But it will then start to come down, and that’s why we’re making announcements like this now so that we are getting that capacity and that infrastructure so that patients can get their treatments more quickly.

But, yes, we’re being honest with people that the total number is likely to rise a little bit more before they start to come down.

Tories to further privatise NHS

Rules governing contracts awarded by the NHS are to be relaxed and private sector involvement expanded, the health minister Maria Caulfield says. She has told Sky News:

We are using the independent sector because they have got capacity. We’re spending about £19bn a year, which sounds like a huge amount, it’s actually only 8% of the NHS budget.

But this is good value for money because not only does it create extra capacity that we don’t have at the moment … but also it takes the pressure off hospitals so they can focus on those acutely sick patients.

Caulfield acknowledged some community diagnostic centres would be in the private sector. She told Sky News:

Of the 160 that we’re opening, there’s only four at the moment that are being provided by the independent sector. Of the 13 we’re announcing today, it’s eight. So the vast majority is still in the hands of the NHS.

The health secretary, Steve Barclay, is planning to say more private- and third-sector providers should be used to help cut post-Covid waiting lists.

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