Call for extra £50bn in tax to boost kids

RISHI Sunak has been urged to raise £50billion in tax on unearned income and wealth, and to spend the proceeds on the young.

Think-tank the Intergenerational Foundation said the Chancellor could generate the funds through measures in the Budget such as charging landlords national insurance contributions on rental income.

The other moves would be taxing dividend income, and removing capital gains tax exemptions or relief.

Ashley Seager, from IF, said the money could “help fund the attainment gap in children’s lost education [and] combat the mental health crisis among children and young adults”.

UP to 3,000 vulnerable children are attending school, a “significant” increase from the first lockdown, a Stormont committee has heard.

The Department of Health said data has been collected since the beginning of the pandemic after a fall in the number of referrals to children’s social services.

Director of family and children’s policy Eilis Mcdaniel revealed in the week beginning April 6, 2020, a weekly average of 646 referrals fell to 542, sparking fears of potential harm to some kids no longer “visible” as a result of lockdown.

She added there were 755 referrals during the week beginning February 8.

She told MLAS on Stormont’s health committee yesterday: “It was one of the key reasons why we sought to get vulnerable children into schools.

“However, the trend reversed rapidly – by May 11 the three-week rolling average for numbers of referrals was consistently in excess of the average number of referrals received weekly before the pandemic.

“And this is a trend that was repeated during the circuit-breaker, falling numbers followed by a spike, and is now being repeated during the current period of lockdown making access to school as important as it was back in March or April last year.”

Ricky Irwin, of the Department of Education, told MLAS the number of vulnerable children attending school was “quite low early on, in the hundreds”, but now there are 2,000 to 3,000.