Let me have another go at explaining to the Treasury why hypothecated taxes are a bad idea and have not been adopted before now. The idea that an NI rise of around £12bn will pay to get the NHS waiting lists down and to fix social care is deeply misleading.
The first problem with it is how does the government transfer the money from the NHS to social care? Will the NHS be willing to say goodbye to the £12bn soon? When will the waiting lists even begin to come down, let alone come down to sensible levels? I suspect the NHS will want to keep the money
The second problem is we spend £40bn of public money a year on social care. The extra £12bn will not pay for social care. It will merely pay for some improvements. It is wrong to give people the idea that social care is cheap, when it is dear and will get dearer.
If we truly want hypothecated revenues to pay for the NHS then we need to tell people all current Income Tax, Inheritance Tax, Stamp Duty, property transaction duty and Capital Gains Tax is needed to pay for the current NHS budget. Then they might understand the sums involved. It would take all current Council Tax to pay the present £40 bn of social care.
The government would be well advised to change all its presentations of sums of money and public service delivery. It is not the case that a £10bn service is good and a £15 bn service naturally better. When I go to the shops I do not come home and say I have spent £80, only to be told by family I should have spent £100. Instead I report what I bought and might report the sums involved if I thought it was good value. My family might want me to buy more things or get better bargains but would not urge me to simply spend more money. Government should talk about what it buys and how it ensures value for money rather than bragging about large sums spent.
March 17, 2022
Good morning.
But it is easier to virtue signal that you have spent ‘x’ amount than to say what on and what for.
The NHS has been politicised by the Left and then weaponised by them. No amount of money is ever going to be enough and anything that smacks of reform will be resisted. Socialised healthcare in this country is a death sentence, especially if you are old.
I know I keep on about this, but I really do believe that the government should make the provision and private healthcare a non-taxable benefit. It would allow people to come off the NHS waiting lists. A small change that will cost the government little.
March 17, 2022
Indeed to take private health cover in the UK you pay four times over – once for others to use the NHS, then tax on what you need to pay the insurance premium, then the insurance premium itself and then 12% IPT on top. Can we have a level playing field and some fair competition please? Not this rigged market.
I never like insurance myself best to save up and just pay directly if and when need to. That way you do not have to pay the 12% IPT, all the insurance overheads & profits, fraudulent claims and do not have the hassle of arranging the insurance or making the claims..
March 17, 2022
I share your view about insurance.
How much does the garage quote to fix your car if they know you are paying?
How much does the garage quote to fix your car if they know the insurance company is paying?
Just insure yourself for the big tickets items you couldn’t readily afford, like occupier’s liability and third party claims.
March 17, 2022
+1.
March 17, 2022
Javid says it is the govt.’s moral duty to provide free health care Ukrainians. What was it said about socialists running out of other people’s money! JR your govt. is spending/wasting our taxes faster than you can ask questions!!
March 17, 2022
Allister Heath is, rather depressingly, surely quite right today as usual:-
The hubristic West has declared victory over Putin far too soon. The Russian military effort is mercifully in chaos, but the invasion has exposed massive long-term fragility.
March 17, 2022
The Ukrainians are fighting like lions. God bless Ukraine.
March 17, 2022
Ed M. Thumbs up to that. Real heroes.
March 17, 2022
Yes they are, Ed: on both sides, apparently.
March 17, 2022
@R.Grange
‘on both sides, apparently’
There’s no evidence of that, mate, only of the Ukrainians.
Also, it makes philosophical sense. When you’re a sovereign nation and attacked by a thuggish regime, that’s going to get the lion hackles up in you. And the opposite for the Russians. The ordinary soldier is going to feel guilt especially as so many of them have relations in Ukraine.
March 17, 2022
Agreed 100% Ed.
March 18, 2022
You’re unaware that East Ukrainians in the Donbass have been fighting the Kiev military for nearly eight years now? Perhaps you should find out about the recent history of the Ukraine conflict, Ed. The war didn’t start on 24th February.
March 17, 2022
LL,
I went to the dentist yesterday, not free at the point of entry despite govt lies to the contrary. Trying to find a NHS dentist is like looking for he s teeth. I never had this problem as a child nor obtaining a doctors appointment. So what has changed? Socialist Tory’s mass immigration policy and still allowing health tourism from around the world at our expense. It is now so big that we are all getting taxed more!!
That is JR’s party and govt solution to everything. We are Tory tax fodder for their world beating virtue signalling!
Johnson wants to increase fossil fuel imports from around the world rather than Producing here to secure energy security. We get fracked gas from Qatar and US. We have our own!! We get wood chip from the US transport it to be burnt here! Idiotic Johnson thinks that helps the planet!
JR and his chums agree or they would do something about it/him. It is in their gift. Only a few weeks ago some wrote letters over Johnson breaking his own tyrannical lock down rules. Will everyone get an amnesty and anyone who paid a fine reimbursed? It will not bring back the elderly the govt killed by transferring from hospital to care homes!
March 18, 2022
Don’t waste your time looking for an NHS dentist who will probably do a second class job anyway because the government do not pay enough, which is why there are so few. I’ve never had a NHS dentist as they don’t exist here in the sticks. Private dentistry is not really expensive, unless you’ve let your teeth go. For instance, on Monday this week, my wife and I visited our dentist together, both had a full examination including checks for mouth cancer and a clean up and polish by the hygienist – total bill £123 for the pair of us and that’s it for 6 months at least – just over two quid a week for first class service, no rushing, appointments when needed including emergencies. Half a pint of beer less each week for good health is very much worth it.
March 17, 2022
‘Government should talk about what it buys and how it ensures value for money rather than bragging about large sums spent.’
Agreed. However, that does not mean the NHS needs to be abolished.
It’s a huge benefit not to have the worry of financial ruin due to illness as happens in the United States.
What is needed is proper management. No political patronage appointees or spurious woke managerial roles.
You could eliminate a whole raft of employees. Give greater transparency to costs incurred. Fire CEOs who fail, with no possibility of re-employment in another health authority.
The cosy PPP arrangements should be dropped. Any outside contractors where necessary should be employed on a case by case basis. The big accountancy firms should not be allowed anywhere healthcare provision.
Reply No-one is proposing the abolition of the NHS! This government has just greatly increased its money and needs to work with it to get results on waiting lists and quality of care
March 17, 2022
Don’t forget that the public paid through the nose for NHS infrastructure via PFI arrangements. This led to cutbacks elsewhere in the NHS.
That’s not the fault of the NHS. That’s down to politicians. From both parties.
March 17, 2022
Reply:- No-one is proposing the abolition of the NHS!
Well not many, which is rather surprising when it is clearly one of the very worse healthcare services around measured by outcomes for a fairly wealthy nation. But it needs huge reform and massive restructuring. It needs to charge all patients who can afford to pay for services and be open to real (level playing field) fair competition from the private sector. It need a proper mistake reporting and error repeat avoidance system as with aircraft crashes. It need to fire all diversity officers and the top people should understand medical work at the coal face and be numerate. Not rather daft lefty Oxford history or PPE graduates. It is also far too driven by Big Pharma – mainly interested in profit rather that good patient outcomes & often doing far more harm than good as we saw with the moronic covid Vaccination of the young and children with rather ineffective vaccines that it seems did far more harm than good in that age group.
March 18, 2022
NHS or US healthcare is a false dichotomy. There are plenty of cost effective European healthcare systems that could be replicated in the UK.
March 17, 2022
Could you ask the PM and the Home Secretary what VFM we as taxpayers are getting from putting up 40000 illegal immigrants in hotels?
March 17, 2022
The government are spending/wasting circa 50% of GDP and deliver almost nothing of any quality or value. Can we have real and fair competition & real freedom of choice in healthcare, education, energy, broadcasting, housing… please?
March 17, 2022
+ transport – where we have vast over taxation of cars and trucks and huge subsides for public transport…
March 17, 2022
+1
They probably want to use our NI for that!
March 17, 2022
And rising daily. Together with the Afghans and Ukrainians we will probably have a quarter of a million more to cloth, feed educate and nurse this year aline.
This government has been an abject failure in immigration and the NIP.
I see Farage is having a demo VOTE POWER NOT POVERTY. That’s a sure vote winner.
March 17, 2022
+1
What if the idea …in lockstep with the global mantra of eradicating poverty…is to create a crisis which will collapse the welfare state?
And then establish a guaranteed annual income.
You know, redistribute everyone’s money so we are all ( bleat 🐑) EQUAL!
They are commie enough and stupid enough.
À mener par le nez.
But led by whom??
March 17, 2022
I wonder if more will turn up than for his “March Of The 100,000” then?
Make sure that there are toilets every 200m this time eh?
March 17, 2022
And refusing to deport them!
March 17, 2022
The government is increasing NI (a tax paid mostly by young people), to help pay for its Brexit (voted for mostly by old people).
If old people want Brexit they should pay for it. Rather than demanding more money from people like me, just cut their pensions.
Close to half of our taxes are now spent funding the elderly. It is completely unsustainable.
March 17, 2022
By “young people” you mean working people under about 65? So not very young!
March 17, 2022
+1
And a lot of older people continue working because pensions etc have been stolen.
March 17, 2022
True and necessary but they do not pay NI on those earnings once they are over 65 (presumably having already contributed for many years if they are indigenous).
March 17, 2022
But haven’t they meddled with retirement age/ when you get state pension meaning that some are older than 65? Retirement age is gradually going up.
And I think you can elect to pay more NI if there is a deficit of “contributions” or some such.
March 17, 2022
And of course we continue to pay income tax on our pensions, all other taxes on purchases, council tax etc. so Andy as usual talks crap and is only capable of one linear thought at a time. In addition I personally paid NIC for 50 years, (longer than Andy has been on the planet), and as he says he went to uni he therefore only started paying anything probably mid twenties so has not even paid in for half the time I have. Of course he will say as a big earner he pays more, but everyone pays according to their means and the marginal tax rate for low earners is much higher than for big earners. We paid for his birth, schooling health and uni yet he is so ungrateful being filled with hate for a bad childhood. He says he does not talk to his mother which is totally unnatural, so there we are.
March 17, 2022
Indeed pensioners are still paying income tax, council tax, dividend tax, VAT, fuel duty, road tax, insurance IPT tax, motorist mugging taxes… and then eventually the 40% confiscatory IHT tax perhaps too.
March 17, 2022
L/L. Yes and what about those well over pension age that are still working? My husband worked until he was 73 and now retired is still paying tax like many retired people are. Andy talks a load of tosh. I notice he never talks about the young who have never worked but claim everything going. Talk about being obsessed with the elderly and Brexit. Yawn. He really does have problems.
March 17, 2022
+1. I too am still working mainly to pay for my three children’s degrees etc. and to help them buy their houses not for me.
March 17, 2022
State Pension age rose to 66 last year and it is due to increase to 68 between 2044 and 2046.
March 17, 2022
So Brexit has increased demand in the NHS which is where the money is allegedly going. That’s absurd bollocks even for you.
March 17, 2022
Andy
Do not forget pensioners also pay tax:
Council Tax, Vat, Insurance tax, VED, Fuel Tax, Stamp duty, feed in tariff on energy, Income tax on pensions, tax on any savings/ investments, then of course Inheritance Tax when we pop our clogs.
Many of us also paid into the State pension scheme for 50 years when working, which was funding others who were pensioners at the time, so present day younger people are not unique in that respect, we have all done it, just like the elder members of all of our families.
March 17, 2022
@Alan Jutson
He knows all that. He is a wind up merchant. Don’t feed the troll. Ignore him and he’ll go away.
March 17, 2022
Mike
I am sure the elder members of his family are proud of him, but perhaps they do not read his comments on this site, and perhaps he is not so critical in front of them !
Fully aware he is trying to wind people up, hence I do not bother comment on his comments often, but had plenty of time to do so today.
March 17, 2022
Alan. Andy has had all thus explained to him in very simple terms before but unfortunately is not able to absorb it. I don’t know whether to laugh like he does about old people or just sympathise at his shortcomings.
March 17, 2022
Alan Jutson
Very well said mate. We have one advantage over all the youngsters in we have got here. A lot of my colleagues were not so lucky so all they paid in for they never got. When they talk about the cost of the elderly for God’s sake turn it around. The number of young single girls with kids living in a house provided with everything paid for, no man or boy on the scene. Woman with three kids all different fathers, third generation unemployed and all these young dingy invaders. Some people want to get their heads out of where the sun don’t shine, wind their necks in as apply a bit of logic and ask WHY. We know the answer they sure as hell don’t.
March 17, 2022
What’s different is that your generation takes far more out of the system than it ever put in.
You are living longer but not retiring much later than generations which came before you. Worse, those extra years you are alive are expensive years when you are far more likely to need costly and expensive medical and social care – none of which you have paid for.
There are not enough young people to fund the lifestyle of older people. So something has to give. We cannot keep indebting the young in favour of the old.
Your generation does not pay its share. It never has. And when this is pointed out to you all, you get angry.
You got everything for free and didn’t pay enough in. We need to massively up taxes on the elderly and start slashing their pensions. The country cannot live within its means until we do.
Reply The government carries out regular reviews of the cost of pensions versus contributions, and regularly raises the retirement age to ensure fairness between generations.
March 17, 2022
Andy, bear in mind that many of your hated older people started work at 15. These days, it is compulsory to stay in education until you are 18, and many don;t start work until their mid 20’s. I dare say the older generations will have worked many more years than the current generations.
I personally clocked up 53 years working as I worked well into my ‘official’ retirement. It was with some reluctance that I finally sold by company and retired, but I did my best to ensure my employees had a decent new employer. Do you ever criticise those who retire at 50, possibly after starting work in their mid 20’s. They possibly contribute the least years of all.
In other words, your moaning has nothing to do with how much we paid in. It is blatant age discrimination.
March 17, 2022
you are wasting your breath and typing. Nothing between the ears, that 30 odd years beyond teenage stupity hasn’t improved.
March 20, 2022
Wrong, education in the UK is only compulsory to 16.
March 17, 2022
Andy, pensions – both state and occupational – are paltry in this country compared with France, Germany, Scandinavia etc.
March 19, 2022
You overlook at least one important difference between then and now. I’m a 70-something retiree, and one of only 5% who went to university back in the day. That’s what successive Governments had felt was appropriate and no it wasn’t all free, my parents funded a great deal of it. Now it’s over 50%. So not only are we consuming tax funding 10 times more university places and the academics who supposedly “teach” them worthless garbage of no vocational use whatever, we’ve removed millions of kids from the tax-paying workplace while they study. It was Blair’s “Education, Education, Education” mantra that brought about this sea change and, given the resulting mindset and behaviour of many student activists from their 3-4 years of uni life, we’ll be counting the social cost for many years to come it seems.
March 17, 2022
Och! Andy. Try and find a different 78 record in the antique market, that one has become all scratched and repeating instead of playing, Lad!
March 17, 2022
Thanks,Andy. Do keep on paying, the more the merrier. It’s what we voted for. We’ll vote for more next time, I hope.
March 17, 2022
Bragging about how much more will be spent sums up the attitude of ministers. Demanding that even more should be spent sums up the attitude of the opposition. It is why the national finances are in such an almighty mess. Too many MPs (including the PM) seem clueless about this mess and how to fix it.
March 17, 2022
This is a very Blairite government. How many times did we hear him, and his ministers, bragging about expenditures with, ‘Look, what’s importan’ is we’re puttin’ the money in, investin’ for the future … blah … blah … blah.’ And now? Sunak even drops his letter ts!
March 17, 2022
Other people’s money – comfort blanket to the political system
March 17, 2022
Hypothecation is a deceit and emotional manipulation of those who have to pay direct taxes. The idea that paying more in tax to finance the bottomless pit that is the NHS or social care should not be baulked at or complained about. Call it emotional blackmail or an attempt to shame people into paying more tax
Most know that the British State and Labour’s public sector is a wasteful and greedy monster out of control in its desire for power and resources and these dependents will use any trick in the book to extract more taxes from the civil population to finance their dependency
Well, most on here recognise the scam we are being exposed to and it’s a scam being perpetrated by deceitful Mandarins, government, opposition politicians and every other public sector dependent who believes the world owes them a living
We need systemic reform not more tax hikes before the Socialist State consumes us all
March 17, 2022
We have a “Conservative” Prime Minister who couldn’t even control the cost of re-decorating his flat and had to borrow the money that had been splurged.
With the Jolly Green Giant in No.10 and Socialist Sunak in No.11 what chance is there of having a “Conservative” Government which controls the cost of the public sector?
March 17, 2022
This has continued for twelve years! It is not an accident it is deliberate. JR must know it because he gets asked to voted on finances! Repeating similar questions to the Treasury, Chancellor and get the same answer is not going to change. At what point does JR have enough bearing his head against a wall and make his party dispose of left wing PMs.
Conservative MPs used to be elected by associations. They got rid of that to have forced left wing clone candidates appointed from the centre so they choose one of three.
Everyone here needs to think what are they going to vote in May. Do not vote Tory if you want change. May and the party got the message at her local election drubbing. This needs to happen again.
March 17, 2022
Donna
NONE
March 17, 2022
All the while you have government posturing about the high numbers as if it is something to be proud of and makes it all better, not being far more clinical in identifying and owning up to the horrendous waste of our money we, the country are going nowhere.
We are like a bloody great cruise liner inviting all and sundry on board and the crew are rushing around fire fighting tres in the hulles in the Hulying to keep all elements of the passangers happy by throwing money at every little perceived complaint or concern.
Just about making headway while all the while the big issues are tearing massive holes in the hull. Energy, infrastructure, NHS, Dingy invaders , Net Zero, millions on smart meters and other green ideas, housing shortages to name but a few. The tax payers can only absorb so much.
The small fires on deck will eventually go out when the vessel sinks. The telling blow will come in the May elections and it could be the start of damage control being overwhelmed.
March 17, 2022
‘… we spend £40bn of public money a year on social care.’ Then I think that MPs need to drill down and explore that figure. My worry is that more and more people will end up in hugely expensive care homes when all they really need is an hour or two of cheapish social care at home.
March 17, 2022
There is also the huge moral dilemma of modern medicine being able to keep ‘just about’ alive the elderly with both the severe physical and mental issues of extreme old age.
I speak from family experience here, so I appreciate the aching pull between keeping loved ones alive at almost any cost but by doing so causing huge financial and practical problems to the rest of the population.
March 17, 2022
SM. Agree as in many cases those people just want to be able to go peacefully. Honestly you wouldn’t put your pet through what some have to endure and we can’t all afford to go to Switzerland to end it.
March 17, 2022
F U S
Correct and also with dignity
March 17, 2022
FuS, Indeed no, ‘we can’t all afford to go to Switzerland to end it’, but we could have thought that MPs and Lords could have considered the arguments put together again and again by associations like Dignity in Dying about the various safeguards these charities have proposed several times in the last fifteen years. Last time it was discussed in HoC was 2015.
The safeguards are there to make sure that only terminally ill competent adults with incurable illnesses, in their last six months according to two independent doctors with a subsequent decision of the Judge of the High Court (Family Division), these persons having actually said they want to die ‘peacefully’ would be allowed to be assisted to die by giving them access to an ‘adequate product’.
Please see in hansard.parliament.uk (volume 815) the (long) Lords debate on Assisted Dying on 22 October 2021.
Unfortunately in all cases such an Assisted Dying text had been near Parliament, there had been campaigns against it, the last one in 2021 by some doctors, 1,689 of them, not particularly representative of the whole profession (as the BMA is now neutral *), most religious leaders in HoL (specially the Bishops) plus some para-olympian to obstruct this Private Member’s Bill, which passed unopposed its Second Reading in the HoL but subsequently was not given any priority to be debated in the HoC and therefore disappeared.
And this with surveys over the years given at least 75% of the population (more than 90% in the 2019 MyDeathMyDecision survey) agreeing on Assisted Dying within the above safeguards.
Interesting to compare how vivaciously the Government could pronounce itself on how impractical it would be to limit MPs’ second jobs.
* bma.org.uk ‘BMA physician-assisted dying survey results published’, 08/10/2020.
March 17, 2022
Not always SM. I have direct experience of people being actively persuaded by medical consultants to refuse treatment, and others waste enormous amounts of money fighting something that can never be won, or be worthwhile in the long run, especially where babies and children are involved.
It’s all a bit of a lottery isn’t it?
March 17, 2022
Sea-warrior, I would not like to end up in a care home. There would be a chance of ending up in a chair alongside someone like Andy. What an end to life that would be – purgatory!
March 17, 2022
Early morning loss of finger control and eyes focusing
Should have read on the top and higher decks.
March 17, 2022
The “Cradle to Grave” lie.
Taxation. Highway robbery.
Women forced out to work.
Chemically bludgeoned into low fertility.
Destruction of family and society.
House prices purposely driven to unaffordable levels.
Old people put into the workhouse.
Children farmed out.
“O Brave New World”…
Dickens would have recognised it!
March 17, 2022
You need help
March 17, 2022
Straw man argument.
Refute what I say.
March 17, 2022
Nig 1
Why so nasty ?
March 17, 2022
+1
March 17, 2022
No – thousands if not millions need help, read and absorb the points made.
March 17, 2022
How true, Everhopeful. Add to that, children filled with propaganda.
March 17, 2022
+ Agree 100%
March 17, 2022
+1
March 17, 2022
So that HMRC want to force employers put propaganda onto employees payslips. No mention of the other 1.25% imposed on employers before you pay, nor the huge increase in Corp. Tax nor that this is blatant ratting on their manifesto promises. Perhaps we should do the same for fuel. Your tank of petrol/diesel cost you £102.20 of which £69.10 was entirely for government taxes and another £11.20 for the costs of complying with pointless government red tape. Real cost of the fuel should be £21.90.
HMRC instructions:-
If your payroll software can put a message on a payslip template as standard – “1.25% uplift in NICs funds NHS, health & social care”.
If your payroll software does not allow for a standard template, but you can add free text messages to payslips, then you can also use the above or “On 7 September 2021 the government announced a new 1.25% Health and Social Care Levy to fund investment in the NHS and Social Care.
March 17, 2022
Cradle to grave unaccountable civil servants supposedly led by politicians with no/minimal commercial, operational or management experience. Chosen because of their loyalty, ie their political advancement is more important than the manifesto they were elected upon plus verbal gymnastics saying a lot meaning a little.
We are not surprised Sir JR. Neither I suspect, are you.
March 17, 2022
I see that you too quote Churchill.
Not in quite the right sense though.
Does that mean you too need help?
March 17, 2022
+1 you made me smile
March 17, 2022
Under the EU, and then under Blair and the EU, the CS has grown to be both political and powerful. It has, and will, prove incredibly difficult to wrench that power away from them. The ONLY solution that I can think of which may work is to tighten the purse strings and have Ministers committed to making every penny count and not demand more from the Treasury. Put them on a diet of having to do more with less.
March 17, 2022
No, the people for whom you voted are in control, and so you and they are to blame for whatever the effects of their policy mistakes are..
Stop this silly ducking.
March 17, 2022
They are using hypothecated tax because they can’t justify taxing us anymore in the general sense. With the highest tax burden in 70 years they no longer have an argument, so the only way to load more taxes on us is to claim its for the NHS or some other ‘goody’.
March 17, 2022
We read about the retirement of Lord Tebbitt truly a brave man and political giant. Look at his colleagues back in the day, Lawson. Howe. Joseph, Heseltine plus of course Thatcher and your good self and realise what a cabinet of pygmies we have by comparison supporting a PM for whom both truth and promises are temporary illusions.
Calling them Tories contravenes the trades description act. Should we be surprised we get the almost daily waste and incompetence that we do?
March 17, 2022
+1 100% NIG L
March 17, 2022
It’s what comes of promoting on the basis of favours done and support for the PM rather than on any kind of merit. Which job other than politics can you rock up with no qualifications or experience (even of life) and collect north of 80 grand plus generous expenses, subsidised meals and drinks, for what for many who don’t do it properly is essentially a part time job – present company excluded of course as JR works harder than any as far as I can se.
March 17, 2022
+1
It the more that they inherited a country in a right mess and made it such a success that, even the ERM and New Labour had a hard time trashing it.
March 17, 2022
Is it too late to Clone Norman Tebbit. I was never keen on M Heseltine or G Howe whose knifing of Thatcher gave us the appalling John Major – though Thatcher did foolishly make the pathetic man Chancellor (even though he fails his maths O level and most of the others too).
March 19, 2022
I see that Sir John didn’t print my reply, but at least i hope that it made him smile.
March 17, 2022
A very good article, Sir John. I like the analogy at the end. Let’s hope Ministers and MPs take note.
March 17, 2022
Thanks John for outlining the taxes which comprise the funding of the NHS and Social care, it puts the huge cost of the NHS so much more into perspective.
I guarantee few would have expected the NHS to have cost more than the entire income tax reciepts.
This cost/list of taxes should be published rather more often.
March 17, 2022
Sir John, I’m afraid the only thing that might bring this disgraceful Not-a-Conservative-Government (NaCG) to its senses is a hammering in the Local Elections in May.
Failing that, it will be losing the next General Election. Not because Labour will be any better, but because there is no difference between them and many Conservative voters (including me) will sit on our hands or vote Reform in the hope that after another period of Labour destruction we might just get some genuine conservatives in the Not-a-Conservative-Party.
The Jolly Green Giant is taking us back to the 1970s. The only glimmer of hope is that Mrs Thatcher came to power at the end of the 1970s after a period of Labour and Not-a-Conservative-Government destruction. Sometimes history repeats.
March 17, 2022
Donna. I’m with you all the way. If tge media hadn’t rubbished Farage like they did we may be further than we are in getting real change.
March 17, 2022
Donna,
Maybe the Conservative Party will lose sufficient votes for a return to conservative policies at an election. However, I think it may have reached the end of the line. It may better for it to go the way of the Whigs, the Liberals and the Labour Party.
Politics in this country would be hugely disrupted, but this may be needed to avoid continuing with the same old, same old.
March 17, 2022
Reform of the NHS must be a priority of this government. No other party will do it. Most people have been convinced it is the envy of the world. So envious, they have refused to copy it.
March 17, 2022
I would rather have the NHS than the American healthcare system.
March 17, 2022
Contrary to what the BBC would have us believe, the choice is not binary at all.
That is the very widespread misconception propagated in relation to many things, e.g. industrial relations, family law, policing, and so on.
There are many countries and many approaches, some far more successful than either the UK or the US.
March 17, 2022
Nobody can copy it. It has been going since 1947 and has billions of pounds of buildings and equipment, such that it could not be afforded. The problem is not the concept but the management and constant interference by know nothing politicians trying to make a name for themselves. Get Health and Education away from the dead hand of politics and there might be some progress towards what it should be.
March 17, 2022
Plausable arguments SJR. It strikes me as very ironic that on one hand we have the NHS trying its best to cure and rectify a whole raft of diseases and human defects, but that on the other hand we have education, food manufacture and marketing all working hard to create an overwhelming customer base for that very same NHS. There seems a lack of realisation that regular cross country runs and cooking fresh unadulterated ingredients could reduce the workload and need for constant expansion of an already very large NHS. That is putting it simply I realise, there are things like population expansion that only add to the problem. However a system that positively encourages a very unhealthy customer base would seem to me to be the root cause of our problems with ths NHS.
March 17, 2022
Very true. You didn’t mention big Pharma. These are the guys making a fortune out of sick people (or selling “vaccines” for people who aren’t sick!). The last thing they want is for people to be long-term healthy, independent of their drugs.
The tie-up between big Pharma and the medical/scientific/NHS establishment is a close one and something I can’t help feeling is not in taxpayers’ (or even patients’) interests.
March 17, 2022
+1
March 17, 2022
You make an important point.
The other think that they don’t want is effective *preventative* medicine or lifestyle adjustments.
March 17, 2022
Is it really ministers who come up with these foolish ideas and their misleading presentation? Of course they are responsible and should chuck them out, but is it really the likes of Sunak who come up with them in the first place? Nigel Lawson and even Ken Clarke would not have agreed to such drivel being uttered in the govts name. One thing that’s changed with the pandemic is people have come to realise quite how bad much of the U.K. bureaucracy is. I suggest far more in-sourcing from the private sector at senior levels, on short term contracts, which can be terminated at a moments notice if needed. It worked with the vaccine. It could hardly be worse than what we have.
March 17, 2022
Excellent comments and analysis.
Why is the Treasury so blind to such sensible ideas?
Do you imagine the NHS budget would stretch to providing them all with strong reading glasses, so that they have no excuse for not reading such pearls?
When it comes to wasteful bloated government I cannot even try to be diplomatic – I admire our hosts perseverance in this matter.
Personally I would still insist that the Treasury account for every penny of money they spend – for too long they have dispensed money in all directions without real accountability – That has to change!
March 17, 2022
“…we need to tell people all current Income Tax, Inheritance Tax, Stamp Duty, property transaction duty and Capital Gains Tax is needed to pay for the current NHS budget”
That is a brilliant quote. If only the government and MSM spelt that out. After hearing our host say this on previous occasions I’ve repeated it to friends – all I get is a look of absolute incredulity.
People have no idea of the real cost of the NHS. If people knew, and believed, that the NHS swallows up all those taxes, then it would lose its deity-like status and be more readily exposed to proper scrutiny.
March 17, 2022
Wanderer.
“Incredulity”
Same response as I get when outlining the cost to others, they look simply baffled and cannot get their head around it.
I usually “get are you sure” ?
March 17, 2022
Indeed. The transition away from a focus on policy outputs to boasting about the size of inputs has been a baleful feature of politics since Blair and Brown, enthusiastically continued by Cameron, May, and Johnson.
March 17, 2022
[…] Hypothecated taxes are a bad idea – John Redwood […]
March 17, 2022
National Insurance is an income tax disguised as a lesser tax
Green Levy is a purchase tax disguised as a lesser tax
Fuel Duty is a purchase tax disguised as a lesser tax
VAT is a purchase tax disguised as a lesser tax
These lesser taxes are maintained to disguise and to artificially reduce the size of ‘income-tax’….we need a single transparent simple tax
March 17, 2022
I’d forgot about the ULEZ tax disguised as an clean air environmental levy, disguised as a purchase tax, which is a duplication of the vehicle road duty tax….the hits just keep on coming all to pretend that income tax is low
Or indeed the council tax which is substitute to income tax
March 17, 2022
Off topic, this has appeared in the Irish News today:
https://www.irishnews.com/news/northernirelandnews/2022/03/17/news/lord-frost-accused-of-seeking-to-undermine-north-s-electoral-process-2616726/
“Lord Frost accused of seeking to undermine north’s electoral process”
That’s because he made a speech in Zurich on Tuesday and said inter alia that:
“the British government ‘will work to end the protocol in the 2024 vote, and that if necessary there will need to be a further Northern Ireland election so that assembly opinion reflects real opinion on the ground at that point'”;
But I don’t think the British government will work to end the protocol, and in any case there would need to be an alternative system to protect the EU Single Market in place before the protocol could be ended:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2022/03/16/what-plans-does-the-secretary-of-state-have-to-secure-value-for-money-from-the-additional-funds-allocated-to-the-nhs-for-2022-23/#comment-1306774
March 17, 2022
Denis, Boris just disconnected Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom, customs wise.
2.—(1) The Customs and Excise Management Act 1979(1) is amended as follows.
(2) In section 63 (entry outwards of exporting ships)—
(a)in subsection (2), for the first “the United Kingdom” substitute “Great Britain”;
(b)in subsection (4), for “the United Kingdom” in both places it occurs substitute “Great Britain”;
(c)in subsection (7)—
(i)after the first “the United Kingdom” insert “or Great Britain”;
(ii)for “the United Kingdom” in the other two places it occurs substitute “Great Britain”.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2022/109/regulation/2/made
March 17, 2022
As I read here:
https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/politics/dup-demands-probe-into-bid-to-excise-northern-ireland-from-customs-regulations-3613033
the attempt was detected and “thwarted”.
“DUP demands probe into bid to excise Northern Ireland from customs regulations”
“Ulster Unionist leader Doug Beattie described the original move as “reprehensible by this Tory government” who could never be trusted.”
March 17, 2022
That Denis is why I moved from Ulster to Devon when Blair started the down the slippery road.
Very few in Westminster even understand NI politics and republican terrorists so mistakes are made.
March 18, 2022
Just out of interest, what exactly so terrified you – as you perhaps imply – about the prospect of a united Ireland, if I might enquire?
March 17, 2022
“Government should talk about what it buys and how it ensures value for money rather than bragging about large sums spent.”
Absolutely. For every credit there is a debit.
Bragging is no consolation to the losers.
March 17, 2022
Let’s do business in the public and civil services like the rest of the country does.
Reward success, to encourage continual improvement to services
Responsibility and accountability is the norm as price of failure or waste of resources results in dismissal. Whether you are a clerk or the Departmental Head. Cannot keep rewarding failure with promotion or early golden handshakes.
March 17, 2022
Why? How? It’s not like business. You don’t have to find customers and manage costs to make a profit. You get a budget every year and you just have to relax and continually improve your working conditions. There is no motivation at all. Even in the sainted NHS, no matter how many people are in A&E, you’ll never see anyone walking quickly or purposefully. They all do what I have come to think of as the NHS shuffle.
March 17, 2022
The Government rather needs to cut back on spending.
The country is under attack from the left – Labour/Lib Dem/Greens/SNP/PC, the Civil Service, the MSM (particularly the BBC), the educational establishment and the judiciary.
The intention is to bring the country to its knees through destroying the economy and then democracy.
The weapons are devolution, Net Zero, high levels of immigration (even illegal with no deportations), ever increasing numbers of public employees, the woke propaganda teaching in our schools and universities and mouth-watering quantities of Government spending – all designed to weaken our wealth generating private sector.
The big question for me is whether many Conservative MPs, including mine, believe in this path, or whether they are incapable of recognising what is taking place or are simply too scared of the BBC and our social media to speak out.
We are in dire need of more brave people, like Marina Ovsyannikova, to speak out, starting with the message that the BBC is lying to us over climate change, the necessity to unilaterally destroy our economy through the implementation of Net Zero, which will only reduce global emissions by 1%, and that windmills are capable of supplying sufficient, affordable and secure supplies of electricity.
March 17, 2022
The story at the time was that Mr Javid made acceptance of his job conditional on a hypothecated ‘Save the NHS’ tax, so it may well be him you have to convince this time, rather than the Treasury.
I read today that higher inflation has made freezing of tax thresholds yield an extra £12bn (interesting how that figure keeps coming up) so as usual, Treasury/OBR forecasts are not worth the paper they are written on.
March 17, 2022
Printing and wasting money will cause inflation. Inflation is a means of stealing the savings of those who have have been careful with their money. In the last recession we had the bank bail outs but next time we will have the bank bail ins where customers will be restricted on how much cash they can take out of their accounts and what the Government allow them to spend it on. Remember Cyprus, the testing ground for stealing bank customers money, and the EU didn’t lift a finger to stop it. All for our own good of course. Just look around the Western world all countries are introducing the same controls. The noose is slowly tightening and people don’t even realise it. Social Credits and being controlled by the WEF is where we are heading if we don’t wake up and rid ourselves of the current main political parties. Meanwhile the super rich get richer.
March 17, 2022
+1 Cristine.
March 17, 2022
Well Sir John, you have tried and tried to explain the wrong headedness of throwing money around without any idea of how it will be used. Even a child would understand. So it is purely political, to gain votes, kudos, or perhaps even sheer ignorance of how the real world works! How long can we keep feeding the beast before the tax payer runs out of money?
March 17, 2022
All taxes should be hypothocated.
Road taxes paid for the roads
Bus taxes pay for buses
Rail taxes pay for the railway.
Then its consensual
Not that anyone in Westminster shows any signs of believing in consent for the plebs.
March 17, 2022
No it is not consensual it would be still compulsory & enforced by threat of prison.
It would be hard to get consent for money for better prisons, sewage systems. What however would be consensual would be schools you choose to pay for, doctors and hospitals you choose, transport you choose… and not markets rigged by the state so you have little or no choice.
March 17, 2022
Can the government please put together a plan, and as quickly as possible, about how to protect the UK from a nuclear attack in general (God forbid).
So technology to protect the UK: 1) from Space 2) Radar 3) Artillery 4) Fighter jets etc
March 17, 2022
Ed M.
It would require a change of government involving none of the current parties in Parliament to rebuild our defence forces after they have been decimated by years of cuts and incompetence. And then there is the wokeness to overcome! It would take years.
March 17, 2022
Relax. No point thinking about it. Sometimes I think we might as well get it over with.
March 17, 2022
No way, mate!
Also, as long as it is also done to help the economy (making / creating the technology here as much as possible).
March 17, 2022
Underground shelters are the best protection.
March 17, 2022
And also from sea of course as well (subs). How effective is our defence? How up to date? Etc
March 17, 2022
Well, it’s probably not a good idea to answer those questions on a public forum.
March 19, 2022
I’m just hoping government considering these things. That’s all. Obviously the details of this are for political leaders and defence chiefs only.
March 17, 2022
That was a very Margaret Thatcher way to express the NHS bottomless pit! Family asking what you got down the shops not bemoaning the fact that you should have spent another twenty quid ! Made me laugh, I liked that.
March 17, 2022
In theory governments collect tax revenue to provide its people with defence, education, health care, housing, pensions, resilience of energy, water & transport infrastructure….in practise the revenue is used in vanity projects and social engineering – this government needs to do less not more
March 17, 2022
John,
Well said!
March 17, 2022
Its all the hidden taxes and payments we the public get hit with
https://www.lowcarboncontracts.uk/data-portal/dataset/actual-cfd-generation-and-avoided-ghg-
Another really good informative piece from The Not a Lot of People Know That website is on the volatility of offshore wind and its reliability. How much have we indirectly shelled out to have these things under one guise or another?
We have been promised 40 GW of offshore wind by 2030, but in reality, the most we can actually rely on is 3 GW.
Still, the man talks about more turbines. Utter madness
March 17, 2022
Turbo. Instead of sanity what do we get? Johnson crawling on hands and knees begging Saudi for oil and creeping around Iran just in case the Saudis aren’t playing ball. Wouldn’t it be better to open up our oil fields?
March 17, 2022
In wanting the Treasury to admit that ‘hypothecated’ taxes cannot possibly be hypothecated, given the massive sums involved in expenditure, it seems to me Sir John is requesting the government to stop lying to its citizens. This seems to me as unrealistically utopian an idea as any I have ever heard. In any case, it has been obvious since 1945 that the country’s citizens actually want to be lied to on almost every front – the economy, foreign policy, immigration, ‘social justice’, and most recently, the Act of Union.
March 17, 2022
The hypocrisy of the Government is boundless. On 03/02/2022 ‘The Government’s position is that any change to the law in that area’ (ie, Assisted Dying) ‘is a matter for Parliament and an issue of conscience for individual parliamentarians rather than one for Government policy’.
And last night 16/03/2022, Lord Forsyth’s amendment on the Health and Social Care Bill related to Assisted Dying was defeated (55% vs 45%) thanks to the Government’s pressure on the Conservative peers.
Mother of Parliament, in the Good Olden Days, it might have been. Now ?
March 17, 2022
I agree it’s rotten.
Thanks for posting that info, with the BBC only reporting on Ukraine I missed that.
There’s doubtless a lot of commercial pressure to keep people alive even when they’ve had enough and on balance we should be letting them go. That might explain why this government intervened. Plus allowing people the liberty to decide their own futures is not something many
of our politicians favour.
March 17, 2022
It’s not only over here that the green revolution is throwing up concerns about the so-called facts and promises about the green dream.
Another very informative look about Hype versus reality and common sense on the Stop These Things web site, dated 18th March 2022 reminding everybody about the real cost and who is actually paying
Green Dream Delivers Daily Reality: Power Rationing, Blackouts & Rocketing Power Bills.
Latest from the Dreamworld of Green Energy
Powerline
Steven Hayward
A core axiom of “green energy” is that it is actually cheaper than fossil fuels, because “the wind and sunlight are free.” The Rocky Mountain Institute argues with a straight face that “the faster the world deploys renewables, the more money we will save in energy costs.” Tell that to Denmark, which generates half its electricity from wind power, but has the second highest electricity rates in Europe. continued)
March 17, 2022
800 former P&O employees and P&O won’t be paying the higher national insurance rates, because they’ve just been made redundant. Instead they will be on unemployment benefit and costing the country more.
That’s what happens when you price British workers out of the international market with excessive taxes.
March 17, 2022
Dave. Not only excessive taxes but cheap foreign labour. Agree. Truly disgusting. It should be illegal.
March 18, 2022
This happened when we were still in the EU. Remember the Welsh workers were replaced with Italian’s and Gordon Brown’s, “British jobs for British workers” fiasco ? Well, we have supposedly left the EU but you would not have thought it !
Question is, how did these foreign workers get their work permits / visas ?
March 18, 2022
Employment law, apart from general H&S and Equality, is entirely a national matter for European Union members.
So that is why. You’re describing mostly Tory employment law.
March 18, 2022
In 2009 a company made people in Berkshire, London, Harlow and Northern Ireland redundant without notice in exactly the same way.
This was under Labour employment law and a Labour government who did absolutely bugger all despite having measures available to them.
Tory, Labour, LibDem, it doesn’t matter a damn.
But carry on rejoicing in your bigoted, tribal naivety.
March 19, 2022
Dixie, if a company broke the law, then it is for those wronged to seek redress in the court, not for government to do so.
In this instance it appears that P&O have also acted unlawfully, and so the same would apply.
The European Union directive on collective redundancies – one of the few pieces of employment law – was issued in 1998, and as far as I know has been incorporated into English, Scottish, and NI law since brexit.
P&O may wrongly have thought that it no longer applied.
March 19, 2022
You have no bloody clue – there is a difference between employment regulations and criminal law.
In 2009 the company administrators broke criminal law and we pressed police, civil servants and politicians to take appropriate action, the police and civil servants refused.
… Perhaps part of the problem was the perpetrators where “officers of the court”.
We also took the administrators to tribunal and won our cases but it took 10 years before any compensation was forthcoming, and there is still money owing. Unfortunately a number of claimants passed away never getting any compensation while none of us got justice.
March 19, 2022
I’m very sorry to learn of your struggle against injustice.
It is a sad fact that the police often act where the law says that they should not and vice-versa, presumably according to their own agenda which is, I think, often highly political.
It is possible to bring private criminal prosecutions but no easy thing.
The offences being:
Failing to give a written statement of how statutory redundancy pay has been calculated to a redundant employee (fine of up to £200 per offence – rising to £1,000 if you fail to respond to a request for one).
Failing to send Form HR1 to DBERR on time in a collective redundancy situation (fine of up to £5,000).
In other words P&O would only be thrashed with a feather anyway.
The powers of the court in civil matters are far greater than this on the other hand.
March 17, 2022
Dave Andrew’s
Exactly pal spot on the money.
It would be great if the whole of these islands got behind these workers by not dealing with P&O shipping in any shape or form be it ferries, cruise ships and commercial shipping. If sanctions against Russia cause so much grief, if the UK rose up and were united in not sailing with them ,then their owners and shareholders will get the message very quickly how disgusted we are with their actions.
March 17, 2022
Deal, turboterrier. Now we need the alternative ships and ferries available. Do they require UK licences, if so, process them quickly, especially those companies that will re-employ the British experienced ferry staff.
March 17, 2022
No French employees fired by P&O.
I suspect they have better employment protection laws. They are also more likely to fight against such treatment.
March 17, 2022
Who says the Brits won’t fight Peter. Perhaps burning tyres 🔥 isn’t our thing. It is out and out discrimination and should be fought in court if one Country has been preferences over another on the shipping line that goes between the two Countries. Time to fight back.
March 17, 2022
Peter. And the company has had the gaul to accept £150 million in taxpayers money for furlough.
March 18, 2022
Absolutely correct.
March 18, 2022
The French are not as silly as to vote for any party which enfeebles employees as do the Tories here.
March 17, 2022
The NHS is appalling. For one thing having a centralised system run by politicians and civil servants who are not medically qualified is bound to to be efficient irrespective of claims that only 12% of the funding goes toward administration. Having politicians deciding for political reasons to provide extra funding for specific ailments is as bad as blanket increases in funding. Giving extra money to private practitioners (GPs) to provide specific treatments which politicians favour is absurd. Waiting times are far too long and and when treatment commences it may not be sufficiently concentrated in time to ensure good future quality of life or survival.
There is no need for a centralised NHS at all. Healthcare is provided locally and the district hospitals should be private not-for-profit organisations as should GP services so that decisions on treatments can be taken
in the interests of patients.
People should belong to insurance schemes which cover both health and social care, either private or public with contributions by the insured, employers and government. Those who pay for private healthcare insurance should not be expected to pay additionally for those without it. People should be free to select their own treatments. Those who have not paid into an insurance scheme should not have any entitlement to treatment without paying for it.
March 17, 2022
The final sentence of this post seems to be an unarguable truth and well worth keeping firmly in mind.
March 17, 2022
John
Why has your gutless, two-faced filthy government given odious Nick Clegg the right to censor and remove contents that appear on this blog?
March 18, 2022
He seems to have let that one through so where’s your point?
March 17, 2022
O/T – but I’m getting rather concerned about the West’s having given up on anything looking like diplomacy with Russia. Putin seems to be going for the full ‘Downfall’ experience. It’s time that a skilled Western politician, with the backing of Western governments, headed to Moscow and made some serious effort to understand him and have him understand us. Making clear which sanctions would be removed in return for which withdrawals might be helpful. Job One is to save the cities of Western Ukraine. Raab might be the man for the job.
P.S. In case you think I’ve gone soft, a substantial sanctions package needs to be left in place until he has left office, and some of those will then need to be maintained for as long as Russia is viewed as the major potential adversary of NATO.
March 17, 2022
You core idea has merit, and I’m sure that moment will come eventually. But Raab is laughable: it will be an American, and given the amount of pain that needs to be inflicted here it’s likely to be an American appointed by the next President.
March 21, 2022
Arnold Schwarzenegger perhaps?
March 17, 2022
Sir John, some years ago, while working as a Management Consultant in Central Government departments, it became painfully clear that Civil Servants’ first rule of operation was, and doubtless still is, to hang on to one’s budget, come what may. Large budgets meant big importance, big salaries, big staff headcount, power, influence, position and prospects. Whoopie do. Those same Civil Servants hadn’t a clue how to set a budget with defined returns on investment, or measurable objectives for staff against which their performance would be appraised. The difference between public sector and private sector operating mentality couldn’t be more stark in these respects. “Bragging about large sums spent” is a natural consequence of that mentality.”
March 18, 2022
MikeP
When I worked for a London Local Authority back in the 1990’s (it was a 6 month contract to help with a backlog of work) I couldn’t help but notice the same thing. And it is true, the mentality of these people is totally different to those in the private sector. The problem is, MP’s like my own (Conservative) have no real background in the Private Sector – SpAds, Activist’s, Councillors, ex-state employees and Community Leaders seems the norm these days.
March 17, 2022
John, Not many people do understand just how big the NHS budget is, they constantly listen to Labour saying your government has cut this, cut that, cut the other, they say we’re spending less than we used to (in real terms whatever that means) and you Conservative MPs just don’t rebut them. I hear people say I’ve paid in enough National Insurance all my working life for 50 years, so what would enough be per annum per person if every adult (over the age of 18) paid their fair share of national insurance to provide a state pension and healthcare? (I read the health & social service alone costs £2909 per person including children! – The Kings Fund) What % of the UK public pay less than this amount in National Insurance Employers + Employees? We are living way beyond our means.
The majority of the self-employed don’t have an employer’s contribution they pay less than half of PAYE workers insurance.
It was a massive Ponzi scheme, a false promise, you’ve taken the money off the public and now want to cancel the associated benefits my state pension age rose from 60 to 67 and that’s still not enough for the likes of Andy, I’ve not had one year off paying in from the age of 16.
Yet people who don’t pay in get just as much in Pension Credit. You find another way of funding them and extras in housing benefit, and a full range of other benefits.
March 18, 2022
Checking online it says the UK paid £142bn in total national insurance contributions and spent £192bn. 35% more than it took in insurance. National Insurance is supposed to be for your state pension and your healthcare!
So which tax budget is used for all those people who only pay in a half a national insurance contribution (the self-employed) and those like children who pay nothing and the retired who don’t pay national insurance and those part-timers who don’t earn over £9500 and those economically inactive? Or isn’t any book balancing done at all?
March 21, 2022
Speaking as a past employee and self employed person I wonder how much of the shortfall is owing to the “salary sacrifice” tax avoidance scheme available to corporate employees?