Labour could raise National Insurance to help fund the National Health Service, Lord Mandelson says. The peer – who was one of the key strategists who made Labour electable in the 1990s – said he could see why the party was looking at taxing some parts of the economy like private equity. But he warned any future Labour administration against overtaxing entrepreneurs and strangling companies that want to grow. Labour is coming increasingly under scrutiny over its tax plans. The party has...

The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, a Whitehall watchdog, vets jobs taken up by ministers and senior civil servants for the two years after they leave office. Analysis by Channel Four’s Dispatches programme shows that this committee approved jobs for 46 Labour ministers who went to work in the private sector since the last election. Nearly half of these went to work for companies which could have had commercial links in the Government departments that they used to run, it...