Rishi Sunak risks a “financial crisis” if he is not prepared to raise taxes to pay for coronavirus spending in the coming months, former chancellor Kenneth Clarke has said.

The Tory grandee said Mr Sunak should ditch a core promise of the 2019 Conservative manifesto not to raise rates of income tax, VAT or national insurance as part of efforts to pay down the historically high national debt caused by the pandemic.

Our political editor, Andrew Woodcock, has the full story below:

People may follow lockdown restrictions less strictly after getting vaccinated for coronavirus, a leading behavioural scientist has warned.

“The concern is that as the vaccination programme rolls out and more people are getting vaccinated themselves and seeing other people in their community getting vaccinated, that people may drop their guard,” Sage member Professor Susan Michie told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

She added that evidence from Lyme disease and influenza vaccine rollouts showed those who were vaccinated were less likely to adhere to preventative behaviours.

In national surveys from December, some 29 per cent of people said that after getting vaccinated they would adhere less closely to restrictions and 11 per cent said they would not follow the rules.

Rishi Sunak will use next week’s Budget to set out new plans to get young people in England into work following disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

The chancellor will announce £126m for 40,000 new traineeships, alongside new cash for incentives for firms to take on apprentices.

Our political editor, Andrew Woodcock, has the full story below:

Former chief scientific adviser Professor Sir Mark Walport has said a “small impact” on cases is to be expected when children return to schools on 8 March.

“There’s likely to be a small impact because we’ve seen it every time, actually,” Sir Mark said.

“It’s clear that children can transmit and we know that cases among young people go up during term time and tend to go down during holidays.”

He added that the government had left five weeks between the stages of lockdown easing because it takes about three to four weeks “to see the signal of change”.

The move to continue the rollout of coronavirus vaccines in age order, rather than prioritising frontline workers, “makes sense”, according to a former chief scientific adviser to the government.

“We are building on an incredibly successful rollout, so over 19 million people have had the jab and the choice has been made to try and reduce as much as possible people getting serious disease and potentially dying,” Professor Sir Mark Walport told BBC Breakfast.

“We know that the vulnerability goes particularly with age. There are also younger people who have been in the priority groups who have other serious illnesses, so it makes sense.”

He added: “The rollout is going in such an efficient way by doing it through the ages. Of course, there will be many teachers, many police, who are in the 40-50 age group and indeed who will have been immunised already. So, it does make sense.”

Chancellor Rishi Sunak has set himself up for a clash with Conservative backbenchers by signalling that his Budget could include tax hikes to repair the damage to public finances from the coronavirus pandemic.

Tory MPs in the so-called Red Wall seats in the Midlands and North have warned that tax rises must be deferred until the economic recovery is underway, urging the chancellor to instead focus on investment to get people back to work.

Our political editor, Andrew Woodcock, has the full story below:

The UK’s public finances will face “enormous strains” following the third national lockdown, the chancellor has warned ahead of his Budget announcement next week.

In an interview for the Financial Times, Rishi Sunak argued that the government’s £280bn investment in coronavirus support would eventually have to be paid, with the potential for changes in interest rates leaving the nation’s finances “exposed”.

“We now have far more debt than we used to and because interest rates … at least a month or two ago were exceptionally low, that means we remain exposed to changes in those rates,” Mr Sunak said.

“That’s why I talk about levelling with people about the public finances [challenges] and our plans to address them.”

His budget is expected to include actions aimed at kickstarting the economy again as lockdown eases over the coming months.

These include a £126m boost for traineeships and a mortgage guarantee scheme aimed at helping aspiring homeowners with small deposits onto the property ladder.

Coronavirus cases are still rising in one in five local authority areas in England, the health secretary has warned.

Matt Hancock told a Downing Street press conference on Friday that the crisis “isn’t over yet” as he pointed to figures showing the fall in case numbers was now slowing and had flattened in some areas.

Our reporter, Samuel Osborne, has the full story below:

Hello and welcome to The Independent’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic today.