I do not understand how hypothecating a small part of National Insurance revenue for the NHS and social care works. AssumingĀ Ā the governmentĀ presses ahead with an increase in National Insurance for next year alongside a dividend tax levy the bulk of the NHS and social care will still be paid for out of general taxation. The government is talking about 8% of the Health and social care budget for the UK being paid for from the levy.Ā Each year presumably there would need to be an additional analysis of how much revenue the extra NI/Care levyĀ would collect alongside a bid for total funds needed to pay for the services concerned, with the danger that the forecast of additionalĀ revenues was wrong. Potentially the care sectorĀ could get less than planned. I guess then the amount would be topped up out of general taxation, further undermining the case for a small element of pledged tax revenue.
In the past the Treasury has always stood out against a specific tax financing a specific service for good reasons. This time they are assisting Ā a muddle. How can we believe that the extra Ā money going to the NHS from the NI increase will only be temporary? How can we be sure that chosen amount of extra NI will be the right amount for future social care needs? Ā Past evidence suggests these public services always need more than planned. If 1.25% extra on NI would offerĀ a permanent fix someone would Ā have tried it by now.
The government should start with a wide ranging analysis of current social care, then proceed to what extra Ā costs the state should accept. Paying for it is best settled when you know how big theĀ bill will be and what you would get for it. Budgets are meant to be about priorities. If social care needs more maybe Ā some less urgent or desirable expenditures should be discontinued. The Paper issued yesterday tells us to await a White Paper in the autumn on reforming social care, and on the integration of social care with the NHS. These might give us better insight into how much money the government will actually need to offer to the providers. The Paper does not provide the detail of how much people can claim under means tested arrangements to cover social care costs where they have Ā£20,000 toĀ£100,000 of assets. The lifetime cap on care costs is set at Ā£86,000 whatever the person’s wealth.
September 8, 2021
I might be wrong but I thought Iād paid extra on my poll tax to cover social care !!!
September 8, 2021
Oh yesā¦the Poll Tax.
I bet JR has fond memories of that!
Itās a wonder Johnson isnāt trying to reinstate it.
Maybe not quite unfair enough for him?
Heād rather just set a match to our world having poured a can of petrol ( ooops!) over it.
September 8, 2021
Council Tax is half Poll Tax and half Rates. It assumes a two person household. That’s why you get a 25% discount for a single person household.
September 8, 2021
Maybe, but the Poll Tax was a tax on existence.
All adults paid irrespective of circumstance.
September 8, 2021
What is unfair about a house with 4 adults in it paying more āpoll taxā than a house with 1 adult?
September 8, 2021
I would ask more to whom was it fair?
One rich person living in a huge house in Westminster?
(In Westminster they paid no Poll Tax at all).
It was a transfer of wealth ā¦just like this NI hike.
And I hope it has the same effect on Johnson as Poll Tax unfairness had on Thatcher!
September 8, 2021
+1
September 8, 2021
MIC is unusually right. I pay an additional cost on community charge for adult social care. I also pay extra for flood defence. Now with the NIC and dividend increase will the extra community charge levy be stopped JR?
Let us not forget Javid has failed at every ministerial post. He put up community charge above election promise to freeze it, year on year increases without any improvements in local authority services, Javid as HS got rid of detention centres for illegal immigrants paving the way for four star hotels instead and now wants everyone to pay more taxes for their care while those criminals he let in get it all for free! But we read he is a friend of Carrie.
Yesterday, NI protocol kicked down the road annexing N.Ireland against all the promises Johnson made. He repeatedly lied. He lied over triple lock on pensions, he lied over not increasing N.Insurance and putting up taxes. Including dividend tax!
JR, of all the lies and broken promises yesterday by your party and govt. which one was the worse do you think? Johnson makes Corbyn look prudent with finances and taxation! On the good side Johnson is destroying your partyās chances at being elected. Highest taxation in 70 years, Johnson bringing his chaotic misfit private life into govt. Only difference between Labcon is the colour of the rosette.
JR lambasted Dom recently over his culturally Marxist comments, please explain JR why your party and govt continue with Sex and Relationship Act to brainwash children? Puberty blockers for children? Experimental drug for Chinese virus for children without parental consent going starkly against Gillick responsibility? Especially as the risk of harm from the alleged vaccine worse than the risk of illness from the virus? Destroying the order and sense of family life appears culturally Marxist to me despite your denials. Instead of insulting Dom, present your case to justify your party and govt. actions.
September 8, 2021
Why is it unfair to expect everyone who uses public services to pay for them? Is it fair that someone living on their own is paying the same (less just 25%) rate of Council Tax as a family of, say, six? Who uses more services?
September 8, 2021
Gosh youād have every car passenger stumping up the Ā£2.50 toll for the Queen Elizabeth Bridge!
I expect you support water metering?
September 8, 2021
That is correct I also pay a social care element on my council tax. I take it this will be abolished …………..
September 8, 2021
Down in Dorset, I certainly am. Council tax was increased by 5% this year comprising an additional 2% for overall services and an additional 3% for social care. My council tax bill, for a Band E property, is now over Ā£300 a month.
September 8, 2021
Sandringham, Band H, would only be about a third more, Donna.
It’s how the rich like it.
September 8, 2021
Rich like Andy is forever telling us he’s rich, Martin?
September 8, 2021
I am also in Dorset. I am glad I downsized to a Band D property, which is Ā£250 a month. Council Tax is one of my biggest living expenses.
I just did a rough calculation. If council tax goes up by 5% each year and the state pension goes up by 2% each year – in about 40 years the whole of your state pension will be used to pay your council tax.
Still, who cares? Politicians donāt think any further ahead than tomorrowās newspapers.
September 8, 2021
Sorry to say this but your pension was not designed to support you for 40 years, though that is a realistic expectation these days.
My father drew more years in police pension than the 30 years he spent serving and died on a pension larger than his final salary.
This is unsustainable.
September 8, 2021
Iām not sure what our Council Tax pays for anymore. Itās certainly not services. We now have a volunteer old lady who spends most of her week picking up litter, we have volunteers running the library and looking after the parks, now the council has stopped clearing the weeds from the pavements. Our roads are so full of potholes it makes cycling dangerous and damages cars. We have to pay extra for a green bin so many people now put garden waste into the general rubbish. Every year the services get less but the tax increases by more than inflation.
September 8, 2021
Well road signage costs heaps, cycle lanes too, Then there are various new managers required, diversity, gender discrimination, mental health consultants, council expenses to fund, the green lobby funding byways, park spaces. Bypasses to be built to divert those fewer cars doing less mileage. Planning departments doing …well, planning one supposes. Keep smiling.
September 8, 2021
It pays for councillors wages. Which in some cases are ridiculous.
September 8, 2021
In 2017 the Local Government Association did a study on what Council Tax was spent on. 57% of it is spent on social care. Obviously some of that is for the disabled and vulnerable but it is mostly spent on the elderly.
No other item of council expenditure is more than 8%.
September 8, 2021
For once Andy I agree with you.
Councils no longer appear to do the stuff that they used to do decades ago, sweep the paths and road gutters, clean out the road drains and culverts, maintain the lights and road services in good order, collect the bins each week, cut the grass and lop the trees regularly, keep the parks tidy, maintain school and all Council buildings including public toilets, grit roads and clear snow, to name but a few.
Now they are centres which mainly re-distribute money for the Government, and handle local charges and fines for car parks etc.
Our council tax Ā£3,000 per year.
September 8, 2021
As usual, you have problems with facts and figures, Andy. Councils get money from government grants, other sources, and part business rates, so Council Tax is about half of Council spending. That reduces your “57% of Council Tax” figure drastically. In fact “adult social care made up 37.8% of council budgets in 2018/19”, which itself excludes the schools budget.
Moreover, “The directors of local authority adult social care services now identify providing care for working-age adults as a bigger pressure than providing care for older people.” Social care is means tested, so older richer people pay more and receive less.
Hence “The National Audit Office (NAO) estimates that most [adult] social care is unpaid and provided by friends and family, equating to Ā£62āĀ£103bn, followed by publicly funded care (Ā£22bn) and self-funded care (Ā£11bn).”
“Childrenās social care is funded and delivered by 151 top-tier local authorities in England. In 2017/18, these local authorities spent Ā£7.9bn on this care. This was 13% of their locally controlled budgets.” So most of the social care public spending is not on the elderly.
All quotes from the Institute for government (https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/)
September 8, 2021
Christine
You are right. It appears that all these council services are now unaffordable.
I believe that as a nation we have been living beyond our means since WW2 by selling off our (utility) companies and infrastructure etc. and importing migrants to save the costs of training our young people as well as using them for cheap labour.
I donāt think this is sustainable in the long-term and believe we are going to need to re-introduce conscription.
Not military conscription again but social conscription to do jobs such as those you have listed as being done by volunteers for the council as well as social care in the community.
At the same time occupational skills could be taught which have been abandoned by our educational sector.
We need to become more self-sufficient to survive as a successful nation.
September 8, 2021
We pay Council Tax to provide local government employees with excellent working conditions and generous pensions.
September 8, 2021
Walt – And no help whatsoever when one endeavours to speak to someone via the telephone.
September 8, 2021
Our Council struggle to empty the bins once a fortnight, due to staff shortages. But doesn’t seem to be short of staff twining on about climate change, diversity and the ‘covid pandemic’. Even the police issue reports on the ‘pandemic’ and what the public should be doing!
Where is all this funding coming from? Silly me it comes from the services they ‘struggle to provide.
September 8, 2021
Have a look at a chart that shows local government resources have flatlined in nominal cash terms since the 2010 election. Caused by austerity Conservative style. Keep in mind that a Pound today buys what you could get for 80 pence in 2010.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/timeseries/rpiv/ukea
September 8, 2021
You are on my favourite hobby horse. When I was a kid, 60 odd years ago, the recreation ground behind our house had a full time park keeper and two full time gardeners. In the summer it housed two cricket pitches with the bits where the bowling takes place looked like bowling greens. The pavilion was filled with playersā wives making teas. All in the middle of a council estate. In the winter there were four football pitches. There were swings and roundabouts – all maintained and painted – and a cycling track (where a bomb hit during the war).
Now it is a derelict wasteland. The pavilion was burnt to the ground years ago and yobs now race stole cars around before setting them on fire. A police station overlooks the park on one corner.
Why is it that when rates were a few quid a year we could afford a beautiful park providing sports and recreation facilities and now, when council tax is thousands, we canāt even afford to someone to lock the park gates. Oh, silly me, what gates? They were nicked years ago and not replaced. So, naturellement, people now dump their rubbish in there at night.
September 8, 2021
The park where I used to play in the 60’s was the same.
Now if seems a lot of these parks if they still exist, are run by parish councils, which are run by elected but unpaid councillors and usually helped with volunteers and a parish clerk who is contracted to work on average about 5 hours a week. Meanwhile, the town and district councils have over the years increased staff levels, but deliver less and less.
As Ian Moore states are large chunk goes on staff pensions. I understand this chunk is between 60 – 80%.
September 8, 2021
You tell a sorry tale which is sadly reflected up and down the land
September 8, 2021
A large chunk goes on Council staff pensions.
September 8, 2021
You’re paying for the “service” provider to shuffle papers from home, a glut of non-jobs unrelated to the purpose or enhancement of the service and gold-plated council pensions. Public services desperately need performance related pay…….emphasis on the performance!
September 8, 2021
Mention of potholes brings to mind the road fund tax which rather undermines this part of John Redwood’s post ‘In the past the Treasury has always stood out against a specific tax financing a specific service for good reasons.’ Treasuries under both Conservative and Labour governments have been more than happy to have a specific tax ostensibly financing a specific service while making sure that it never delivers.
VED and fuel duties are not all allocated and spent on roads!
September 8, 2021
Kathy, in the real world taxation has basically two purposes. (1) to stop things happening the government’s ideology doesn’t want to happen. Tobacco tax; Sugar Tax Alcohol Tax etc etc. (2) to divert useful private sector output of any good or service into the public sector; the government considering it would benefit all of our nation’s citizens; not just the few that have the cash to afford such goodies. Taxation does not fund government spending in a fiat currency economy; government spending has demonstrated that in spades with its Covid pandemic spending in the last 18 months.
The government issues its own monopoly currency for its private sector to use for all domestic transactions. The government issues tax demands to its citizens that are only payable in its own monopoly currency. Pounds are basically government tax credits. You have to get some to pay your taxes. That is what makes the Pound valuable.
The structure of the taxation system has no connection whatsoever with the government’s structure of spending on services.
September 9, 2021
Acorn, Neither (human created) wealth, nor money, nor goods, nor services come free. Printing money (in a fiat currency) does not create more treasure, it just devalues the face value of the currency, and gives the government unearned spending power. The government can only spend what it receives: by taxation; and by (its semi-monopoly) money printing.
Dependency on money printing over taxation creates inflation, but more importantly diverts resources from where people want to where the government wants. That may turn out to be best but usually doesn’t, witness HS2. It does not create more resources (ie wealth), it simply skews them, usually to the advantage of the lobbyists (political or commercial).
If government ran the economy as a (sensible) householder does, we would have a more stable prosperous and sound economy.
September 8, 2021
Our Council has stopped collecting the garden waste, temporarily they say, and that is why we are not to get a refund. Thieves.
September 8, 2021
Indeed. I pay Ā£134.46 yearly on my Council Tax bill, for Adult Social Care.
September 8, 2021
I pay about Ā£1500. Precisely none of which comes back to me.
September 8, 2021
Neither does your contribution to Foreign Aid. But you or a member of your family may well need social care one day.
September 8, 2021
If you have children others who don’t have children are paying taxes so you get free education for your children.
That’s how it works andy.
It’s a community thing.
September 8, 2021
Your rubbish is not collected? You donāt have street lights? The fire brigade wonāt come if your house is on fire (maybe they are all pensioner volunteers). You wouldnāt call the police if someone was breaking into your home? Your council doesnāt have a planning department? They donāt mend reported potholes? Etc. Iād ask for your money back.
September 9, 2021
Exactly so, Mike. Andy has made this sort of comment before. And of course he does receive services for his taxes. But he’s also told us he’s oh so rich and would pay higher taxes if he could anyway. Yet he only pays Ā£1500 – what for he doesn’t say, but if it’s council tax, he isn’t as well off as he’s previously boasted.
September 8, 2021
@Cheshire Girl – you are not supposed to know that! A smoke and mirrors Government totally out of control on spending – just like the hooked gambler, keep betting one day you just might beat the odds
September 8, 2021
Mick. Yes, it’s listed on my break down of poll tax money. A Ā£20 per month rise so where is it going?
September 8, 2021
There are some things to like and more things to hate about yesterday’s announcement. I’m in favour of hypothecating health and social-care funding because Labour and the Conservatives are both in a form of an arms race under which both are trying to throw as much money as possible to the wasteful NHS. My major concern: that this Ā£30+ bn catch-up funding for the NHS just isn’t justified. Will the NHS increase physical capacity? Will GPs do extra surgeries? Will the operating theatres be open for longer? Those are questions that need answering. And another: why was the Cabinet been left out of the loop on this issue?
P.S. I went for an annual eye-test last week, with a commercial provider. Apart from the obligatory gel, and the face-masks, the service was as thorough as normal. I felt re-assured – and grateful for commercial providers.
September 8, 2021
It’s not about the NHS, it’s about using the autocratic NHS to silence critics who even dare to question this income tax rise. Try criticising the NHS today and see the negative and aggressive response you get. That is part of the politics of client state parasitism.
This PM is a two faced snake and so his is party
September 8, 2021
DOM – the NHS has become the new national religion, its day of worship was a happy clappy Thursday instead of a Sunday. Dare challenge the NHS and you are a heretic.
It is the industrial wing of the Labour Party and ensures that they maintain the power even when they lose all of the votes.
The NHS, in effect, can call a national strike (lockdown, via the teachers) with enforced secondary picketing (the parents made to stay at home.)
September 8, 2021
Dom, The problem with the NHS is that it fulfils a basic human need – not to be financially ruined (or even worse, to have to forego treatment) if you are unlucky enough to fall seriously ill.
People cling onto the NHS for that reason – and because they do not trust any government to honestly retain the insurance aspect of the NHS out of general taxation, if health care would revert to private provision.
Solve that, and R NHS ceases to be a shibboleth.
In the meantime, the real problem is BINO – where Northern Ireland has been annexed by the EU, courtesy of Boris Johnson and Theresa May. Johnson thinks he is getting away with this by periodically issuing “ultimatums” to the EU whenever Northern Ireland crops up in the news cycle. It is entirely cynical on his part, since he clearly has no real intention of solving this Remain running sore. Now that is something we can, and must, win to achieve Leave.
September 8, 2021
+1
Dom, there is certainly not anything conservative about him, family destruction, no personal responsibility, no financial prudence- thrown to the wind and helped by his party to cover his tracks when caught out ie holiday to Caribbean, decorating flat etc, brainwashing children, advising children to go against parental consent etc. I am still waiting for JR to make out the case that Johnson has any conservative values, strategy or plan.
Cummings calling him Trolley appears to be a good reflection.
The alleged NHS back log was caused by Johnsonās bad decisions in the first place!!! Now he expects us to pay for his stupidity, why is his party not holding him to account? How about all the granting of contracts to mates?
Johnson needs to be ousted for the sake of our country.
September 8, 2021
Intensive care beds are down.
September 8, 2021
But NHS Managers are massively up. 42,000 in 2009 …… 77,000 now ….. with the “absolutely essential” Inclusion and Diversity Managers due to swell the numbers still further.
Atrociously managed; over-bureaucratised – a bottomless money pit.
September 8, 2021
correct
September 8, 2021
Exactly rather like the rest of the UK government.
September 8, 2021
How about keeping our money and simply paying doctorsā¦like we do the hairdresser.
Get treated with a little dignity and respectā¦because money is changing hands.
Competition. Untrammelled and unsullied by govt interference.
Imagine seeing a doctor!!!
September 8, 2021
NHS capacity is limited by the number of doctors the UK trains. There are plenty of suitable UK candidates, but the number admitted is kept artificially low to boost doctors’ pay. It’s that old supply and demand thingy which those on the hard left apparently cannot understand.
For a tiny fraction of the QE dosh sloshing around we could double the number of medical courses. I am sure the universities would be only too eager. But the BMJ may not – there’d be wails about reducing the “quality” of candidates, as though the current candidate selection process was perfect.
September 8, 2021
Plus very many go part-time for some reason.
September 8, 2021
+1
September 8, 2021
I certainly would be in favour of the state owning the NHS infrastructure and charging a private sector health service a fee for its use. Private GPs charge Ā£120 for a first 30 minute appointment and Ā£67 for 15 minute follow-up appointments, last time I went to one a while back. Hip replacement Ā£8,200 – Ā£12,704. Knee replacement Ā£8,500 – Ā£13,467. Cataract extraction Ā£2,325 – Ā£3,537. Colonoscopy Ā£1,500 – Ā£2,325, according to NetDoctor.
NHS England’s operating cost was circa Ā£125 billion less circa Ā£2 billion of operating income. It spent about Ā£2.1 billion on its own staff. The rest was spent on commissioning and purchase of goods and services. Separately, well out of the limelight of Westminster and the MSM, austeritised local government spent Ā£22.6 billion on Adult Social Services. A service very much appreciated when a close relative, paralysed below the waist with spinal cancer; spending 24 hours a day in a bed in the lounge, was visited twice a day by Care service staff who tended to all his bodily needs.
September 8, 2021
+1
September 8, 2021
Your private GP has to pay for his own infrastructure, so your suggestion that the NHS, having a taxpayer-funded infrastructure, should then charge full private healthcare rates is nonsense. Ditto private hospitals and their staff.
September 8, 2021
A quick search found a private GP clinic near me offereing Ā£35 for a phone or video consultation or Ā£69 for a face to face appointment at the clinic.
Available tomorrow morning.
Think you were overcharged acorn
September 8, 2021
+1
September 8, 2021
I didnāt get my regular diabetic check-ups for 18 months. They have now resumed but the missed appointments have gone forever. The same must apply to many appointments whereby the patient has recovered, gone private, or even died.
So the catching up applies mainly to missed operations. As you state unless we have more doctors and operating theatres then the NHS canāt catch up. With the constant growth in the population will we ever catch up?
People will be angry to see their taxes rise when they see wasteful spending on things like diversity managers.
Boris needs to be stopped and stopped soon before he destroys this country forever. The backbenchers can do it now or wait until they lose the next election. The Conservatives with their huge majority had such a good opportunity to improve this country but Boris has squandered this on vanity projects and waste.
September 8, 2021
We didn’t ‘save the NHS’
I have now lost 5 friends during this pandemic to non-covid illnesses which may well have been through neglect by the NHS. I have lost none because of Covid and even the two hospitalised didn’t need too much treatment, just observation.
September 8, 2021
Re: diabetic appointments, my daughter is the same. First one since late 2019 is next month.
September 8, 2021
+1.
September 8, 2021
+1
Sad to say Dominic Grieve was right about him!
September 8, 2021
I couldn’t agree more Christine. Your last paragraph sums it up accurately.
September 8, 2021
Sea-Warrior
Agree absolutely why does the NHS need more money, what is it going to spend it on, Training thousands of more staff, building more and more hospitals above those already proposed and budgeted for.
We are informed that the NHS is not coping because of a shortage of staff and facilities, so how is more money going to help if we are not going to expand both. Good grief we are informed the Nightingale hospitals were not used because of a staff shortage..
I see it is being reported that in Hampshire Trust, those on the NHS front line who refuse the covid jab will now be removed from front line patient contact to other duties, but that their jobs and current pay will still be guaranteed, a number of reasons why this is absolute madness, not least but it will upset those employed in other positions who are earning less than these chosen individuals, and you cannot employ anyone new on the front line, for a position that is guaranteed to someone who will not be able to fill it because they are now working elsewhere.
What an example to set, More wasted money, more staff confusion, lack of any sensible management control or thought.
This is a another typical example of the HNS, State run, Local Authority, Management failure.
Promote or shift to one side the useless and incompetent, who refuse to follow the rules.
September 8, 2021
Spot on Alan – the first thing they should request is more staff, more equipment, more estates, higher salaries……no no no no they just ask for an extra Ā£20bn+++
September 9, 2021
Alan. It will mean giving the public a worse service than they receive now.
September 8, 2021
anyway what is it about introducing new words all the time? Hypothecating?
Whats wrong with forecasting (I suppose a bad smell lingers?) Predicting (that will never do – Covid wasn’t predicted, although plenty of scientists tried to tell us it was just a matter of time). Future planning? Heavens no! might be the reaction of Yes! Minister.
September 8, 2021
There needs to be research into why so many health professionals go part-time and why those who choose to are being selected for medical courses over those who probably wouldn’t. This is a huge burden for the NHS – one person’s work covered by two people that have cost the NHS twice as much to train as it needed to.
September 8, 2021
As Mrs Thatcher once said , no no no.
On GB news today the Taxpayers Alliance were highlighting yet again the real elephant in the room government Waste,Waste,Waste. Everywhere you look in civil and public services its there, but ignored. This phenomenon has be going on for years and years. You give to these sectors but who and where is it really spent. What controls will, are in place to ensure that monies are not wasted?
September 8, 2021
Waste, waste, waste, piss poor and declining public services and so much that government does is positively harmful anyway. It will kill jobs, diminish the size of the productive sector and raise less tax in the end. We essentially have a government who are governing for the 20% state sector to allow it to continue to parasite off the private sector – while generally inconveniencing them with nonsense green crap and OTT regulations too.
Kill these appalling tax rises, stop the bonkers HS2, cull net zero, the many pointless degrees, all state sector and NHS diversity jobs & similar and fire about half of the state sector the ones that do more harm than good. This would save Ā£Trillions at a stroke. Releasing them to get real & productive jobs instead rather than āworkingā from home. Sunak clearly is another economic illiterate & Socialist as one expects of PPE graduates his first act to cut entrepreneurās CGT relief by 90% the. he taxed people to buy others restaurant meals. The man is a damn fool.
The NHS need restructuring, real and fair private sector competition and some efficient management. Certainly not more money for them to piss down the drain on Ā£80k (+ pensions) diversity officers.
September 8, 2021
+1
September 8, 2021
The public sector is compelled by Tory doctrine to outsource.
However, they are not funded or empowered to ensure proper inspection and enforcement of standards by those contractors that they use, and may often be subject to effectively extortion by local monopolies.
As a result a great deal of public money i goes straight into the pockets of these privateers, often for ineffective products and services.
September 8, 2021
You forget Labour’s Private Finance Initiative which was the greatest outsourcing project.
September 8, 2021
Indeed as you say the NHS are damn useless at outsourcing and subcontracting too. Not their money so who cares? Nothing to do with funding just incompetence, indifference & negligence.
September 8, 2021
+1
September 8, 2021
Good point Turbo. I am sure that if the unions get their way all this extra cash will go on wages and extra staff and interpreters for all the non English speakers who are invading us at the moment.
September 8, 2021
I hope that Sir JR that you and enough of your backbench colleagues/doubters will vote with the Opposition,LibDems and SNP to bring this down later today
September 8, 2021
Look like it will go through to me. But it will raise less tax not more in the end, an appallingly damaging agenda. The Government shooting itself and the wealth creating economy in both feet. No longer are the Tories just socialists light, nothing light about them at all they are well to the economic left of Brown and Blair.
September 8, 2021
This appalling jobs tax increase will also mean the Government get a far lower proportion of the Covid loans ever repaid.
September 8, 2021
Then were have the triple lock ratting suspended for āone year onlyā they say. So it will not rise by 8% next April but by 2.5%. But this surely means that for the rest of pensionersā lives they will get 5.5% less? For a couple now retiring at 67 that will give them about Ā£16,000 less over the rest of their lives (assuming average life expectancy for a 67 year old.
They will also be hit further hugely by energy costs and the insane net zero agenda. Any cash they hold will have its value inflated away.
September 8, 2021
Giving them Ā£8,000 less to spend on social care!
September 8, 2021
+1
And there is also talk of making pensioners pay NI!
September 8, 2021
@LL
Yep – not forgetting that many pensioners lose a % of their state pensions due to Income Tax and those who don’t are probably more in need of an extra 8%. The UK’s state pension is hardly the most generous, although comparisons are not straight forward.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn00290/
At the risk of stating the obvious, if the extra National Insurance contributions hit workers and the abandonment of the triple lock hits pensioners, then non-workers and low earnings workers, below pension age escape the current extra cost. Some non-workers and low income workers who perhaps receive state benefits, have their own issues. Other non-workers perhaps live on pure investment income – they seem to escape.
Rather than break two manifesto pledges Mr Johnson might have been better advised to break only one…. maybe a straightforward % increase in all or some Income Tax rates – not forgetting the pure dividend tax rates.
September 8, 2021
Plus social care cost will all have rise as the government is taking another 2.5% (circa 4.2% off their wages) off them. So a great social care plan!
September 8, 2021
I doubt that any pensioners have seen their bills increase by 8%. Many have faced a different problem: being allowed to spend anything other than a pittance. There is no case for continuing the ‘triple lock’ at a time of intense fiscal distress.
September 8, 2021
I see that gas prices have been hiked by 35% (!) in Northern Ireland. Meanwhile the electricity market continues with soaring prices. On Monday, the day ahead price reached Ā£225/MWh. For tomorrow, it is Ā£280/MWh. Yesterday, they were testing the new interconnector to Norway – exporting (!) up to 1.4GW and driving prices sharply higher, with the system price going over Ā£3,400/MWh. I don’t know what National Grid think they were doing when it should have been obvious that the testing should have been deferred (or better, held in the other direction) until market conditions were less tight. The Ā£7.5m cost should come out of their profits – I don’t suppose the Norwegians were paying GB market prices.
Chart of the interconnector flows and system prices
https://149366104.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/GB-INterconnect-NOrway-Testing-1631104403.6455.png
September 8, 2021
whats the next thing this government will renege on
September 8, 2021
That’s Ā£600 that I can’t spend on the high street. 15 trips to pub or restaurant.
The NHS is perpetuating crisis by encouraging the sick, ageing phenotype. There is little point in extending life expectancy if it is merely keeping people going in dependant misery on cocktails of pills. What is the objective ? Long life for the sake of it ?
I’m all for helping the accidentally ill but not for perpetuating poor lifestyle choices and normalising obesity.
However, the secret to healthy longevity is down to:
– a grown up diet including things such as green tea, dark chocolate and turmeric.
– 20 minutes a day of intense bursts of walking and bodyweight exercise (of which only about 5 minutes is in the discomfort zone.)
– a bit of luck
Most people are not interested in doing this. If, however, the outstanding results in looks, mobility and general wellness that came from this approach were deliverable in the form of a pill then people would be prepared to pay thousands for it.
It would save the NHS billions and people could work and live independently into their 80s (seeing as there are already so many octogenarians doing full time work for charities.) Then not even Andy should have a problem with people getting old.
September 8, 2021
Lifelogic, Can anyone seriously distinguish Major, Blair, Cameron, Clegg? And now Johnson has reverted to the norm too – BINO, and tax rises, and establishment wheezes, and government nannying and surveillance. What was that about doing the same things and expecting a different result?
September 8, 2021
Yes and stop them from extending the Coronavirus Law. ( Or is it a done deal?).
Johnson is no doubt trying to hide his tyranny behind the furore of this tax bill.
Small potatoes compared to our rapidly vanishing freedom.
September 8, 2021
Indeed, Everhopeful, more coercion, more surveillance, more usurping parents, more taxation. The government’s go-to model seems to be China.
Watch the unfolding revelations about covid19 – likely escape from the Wuhan lab (despite Fakebook censorship); USA funding of gain-of-function coronavirus research at Wuhan; the total uselessness of the untargeted national lockdowns; NHS rationing of non-covid patients; next to useless retail face-masks; more extensive and worse side-effects to the vaccines than officially admitted; waning vaccine efficacy; government coercion to vax children, despite lack of overall benefits (JCVI); etc.
The only thing Boris Johnson is good at is being less bad than Theresa May or Tony Blair.
September 8, 2021
Less bad than May or Blair. Oh, i don’t know, he just needs a bit more time.
September 8, 2021
+1
Absolutely.
September 8, 2021
+1
September 8, 2021
As Health and Social Care are devolved matters then only English based MP’s should vote, surely?
September 8, 2021
+1
September 8, 2021
Good one! Fat chance of any MP spoiling their chances of promotion. Apart from a few old war horses who know theyāll never see high office.
September 8, 2021
My constituent MP will vote for it, just as she has voted for everything May and Johnson propose. At the same she has upped her effort of into the local media and sending out communications to Councils claiming she is supporting the people.
September 8, 2021
Edit should read:
At the same she has upped her self praise effort in the local media.
September 8, 2021
How can it be morally just for a tax paid by English tax payers only, to be voted on by Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs, for 20% of the revenue raised to go to the devolved nations via Barnett consequentials? The whole thing stinks of unfairness.
September 8, 2021
With respect, talking about moral justice and this PM in the same sentence is a bit of stretch. Johnson is trying to kill more than one bird with this stone. Fairness doesn’t come into it – he is the consummate opportunist (and not much else…): he will badge this repeatedly as a ‘Union Dividend’, so yes, the southeast of England will continue to subsidise everywhere else.
September 8, 2021
Yes, Scotland has announced their plans for social care but our MP’s haven’t had a say in them. Unlike in England where every Tom Dick and Harry put their oar in.
September 8, 2021
+1
September 8, 2021
The NHS is now a political organisation. Thanks Tory party for surrendering to Labour’s Socialist public sector.
Mr Redwood knows full well this is not about hypothecation. This is about insulating a volte face policy decision on income (forget the tosh about NIC, it’s not an insurance payment but a tax on employment income) tax to destroy criticism and shame those who dare to question its invocation by linking it with the now highly political NHS.
Criticism of the NHS has now become a verboten. This is a deliberate strategy by the Tory leadership. Well, I don’t clap for an organisation that refuses to sign off my prescription for my anti-epileptic drugs because I refuse to have an experimental therapy jabbed into my arm that could neutralise the efficacy of the drugs I need to manage an illness that can cause death.
This PM, your party and Labour’s public sector are working together, fact. I recall this ex-Thatcherite Chancellor on the steps of No.10 with the female heads of the CBI and the TUC when Johnson slithered into Downing Street. I knew then that this act of virtue signalling meant Tory surrender to Labour’s client state and her public sector at the expense of the private sector and the taxpayer. Tory abuse to protect themselves from the enemy.
It is very, very simple. John’s party has sold its soul to the left to protect itself from the left. A party of talkers surrendering to a party of vicious activists who know they can slander, demonise and denounced any Tory MP who dares to oppose the Marxist march towards State totalitarianism using any and all forms of political activity
And still the English voter blindly stick with the two main party that are using every trick in the book to conceal their true identity
Repugnant doesn’t even begin to describe the two main parties
September 8, 2021
Worst government with the worst opposition in history, at a time when the media are also dragging along the bottom of quality.
September 8, 2021
We have a spendthrift, unaccountable Government.
Billions wasted on Track and Trace, to name but one example. Pals given lucrative contracts with little scrutiny.
September 8, 2021
How on earth can one honestly spend Ā£37 billion on track and trace, so quickly and with so little (negative probable) value delivered to the public. If they actually managed to do this honestly I would be amazed. Can we see an audit please?
September 8, 2021
Lifelogic
“how on earth…..”
Supply and demand
The Government wanted it, asked for it rapidly, and a few quoted with silly prices, which the government accepted.
You know the government is usually absolutely hopeless at any sort of negotiations, just look at all of the other overspend projects, so why are you surprised ?
I have to agree, its probably the most expensive phone app ever developed, but of course the cost is not just the app working, its all the other add ons and checking which costs the dosh, at least I assume those costs are in the Ā£37 Billion and are not extra’s !
John do you know ?
September 8, 2021
agree
September 8, 2021
Yesterday, 800 Afghand and 900 channel dodgers arrived.
Just when are we going to get a grip.
Raising taxes for the NHS when we are being overwhelmed by immigration is nonesense.
You deserve to be cast out of power for many years.
There will be a civil war in this country very soon.
September 8, 2021
+2
September 8, 2021
+1. Priti Patel needs to take real deterrent action – not just hot air but there is clearly no political will to take anything but superficial action. Numbers will thus continue to grow.
September 8, 2021
Ian, I’m glad to be seeing it.
There is no better visible proof that the Tories are no good.
Even Boris’s charm will lose its magic soon.
September 8, 2021
+1.
September 8, 2021
I think you mean ‘migration’; immigration is something else, and strictly controlled. The mistake, I’m afraid, is believing that human migration can be easily controlled (and certainly won’t be with Ā£54 million thrown to the French by the Conservative Government…just for the craic….but hey what’s more tax payer’s money bunged down the drain?).
More the fool those that vote for people who promise things that cannot be delivered i’m afraid (Exhibit A: Priti Patel’s performance). The voters, and in this case, Conservative voters, get what they deserve (which is, to be poorer and disappointed that the unicorns could not be delivered).
September 8, 2021
Tomorrow, the only personnel movement I want to hear about is one moving out of the Home Office.
September 8, 2021
Don’t worry about this; Boris has got 200,000 HK Chinese lined up!
September 8, 2021
+1
Illegal immigrants, criminals, given four star hotels for free and told not to work for at least a year, as Javid got rid of detention centres, while existing population being taxed out of existence!! Then we have successive Tory HS telling us on a yearly basis how many hundreds of thousands of,illegal immigrants are lost to their system!!
September 8, 2021
Ian I agree. Everyone I speak to is really angry over the immigration fiasco. There will come a time when we will run out of hotels and other accommodation for them all not to mention money. Notice there is no shortage when it comes to them and these judges say they have to have decent living quarters. Where are these judges when our own people are not in suitable accommodation and are told the waiting list is 10 years or more? This government has got its priorities so wrong in lots of areas. It’s the worst government in a long time and that’s saying something.
September 8, 2021
I think I’ve found the solution to elderly care.
Ship all the old people out to France and get them to come back on rubber dinghys.
The Tory Magic Money Tree means that they won’t cost us a thing and they’ll get 4* accommodation . Problem solved.
September 8, 2021
Perhaps you should speak to some nicer people?
September 8, 2021
Andy. Pot calling the kettle black.
September 8, 2021
Interesting Ian, it was reported over the weekend that 20,000 Afghan refugees we volunteered to take would cost us Ā£25 Billion over the next 10 years to fully support.
I can only guess that the Rubber dinghy crowd of 13,500 this year and the 8,000 last year , will cost us exactly the same amount over the same number of years, Thus Ā£50 Billion over 10 years (Ā£5 billion a year)
How much does the new NI increase raise each year JR ?
Food for thought !
September 9, 2021
sadly the bubble is going to burst one way or another, the political class are destroying the country, and the lefty indoctrination which takes place at universities has led to a woke intelligencia with no self awareness
September 8, 2021
I can only assume that by this stupid move, the Government is more interested in every day’s MSM emotive headlines than in intelligent financial and administrative management.
In various ways, I have interacted with the NHS for 50 years – and time and again it has appeared to me that the problem is NOT insufficient funding but imbecilic and on occasions corrupt management, combined with the elevation of the organisation to national religious status.
I have gone to some lengths to ensure that, as a UK citizen, I can vote at a General Election despite being an expat. Unless something changes radically before the next GE, I feel very strongly that, for the first time since I was eligible to vote (1966), I will abstain.
September 8, 2021
+1. What an appalling choice in May 2004 – the Socialist tax borrow and piss down the drain Tories or Starmerās Labour wagged by the SDP. Still could be even worse Biden, Sturgeon or the Taliban. Doubtless they will still at this election claim to be a party of low taxation and economic competence and make new con trick/lies as manifesto pledges.
September 8, 2021
I could not agree more . Hypothecation is a lie. This money is just money and its is no more than a tax grab under cover of Covid and a long way prior to the next election.
Everything I feared about this Government is coming to pass .The country is now a Protectionist anti business, globally inconsequential old people`s home, with the highest taxes since the 60s . In my charitable moments I have imagined that the John Redwood is not entirely stupid and must know perfectly well that Brexit has a large cost . I have wondered if behind his often infuriating half truths lurks the hope that if the UK could escape form the European Social Democratic model then eventually its prosperity would be permanently improved .
I have always thought the fundamental error here was the presumption that the UK was naturally an Atlantic tiger economy .Everything we know about its past tells us it is naturally a leftish failure .
Events are proving me right and my imagined John Redwood wrong .We drift left we shut borders , we put up with queues and pretty soon anyone with any brains with start leaving .
This tax is an insult , a lie and a mistake
September 8, 2021
Exactly I have left already and am largely disinvesting from the appallingly run UK. With perhaps even worse to come under three years from Starmer/SNP.
September 8, 2021
Shutting down the country for two years must have been costly too.
I did tell you so but you continued to hide away and told John Redwood not to be beastly to you by forcing you into your office.
(I note that as rail commuter traffic is low rail leisure traffic is high. What does that tell us ?)
September 8, 2021
You imagine that “Brexit has a large cost”, and that’s the reason for the highest taxes since the 1960s?? Ahh . . . another ‘Brexit caused Kabul’ moment from Newmania.
September 8, 2021
Having pulled out of Afghanistan, has the government found itself looking for another war? This time though it’s with business, particularly those that compete in a global marketplace. How will their workers cope with the added austerity, already taking too much of their income to pay for rent and mortgage, and with council tax rising inexorably? How will the companies compete with more of their investment money denied them by rising tax rates? If we pass the costs onto our customers, our customers will walk – plenty of places they can go to around the world.
You’d think that coming out of the Covid pandemic we need British business to flourish and generate income and taxes. The government thinks however they should be hammered into the ground. If Boris had any grey matter between the ears, he should be encouraging it with lower taxes. Eliminating rather than increasing employer’s NI would be a really good idea.
September 8, 2021
+1 a tax on jobs and the UKās ability to compete.
September 8, 2021
Hypothecating this tax to the NHS and Social Care will simply ensure it all goes to the NHS forever, even when the backlogs are cleared. This will leave Social Care unfunded. If throwing money at the NHS worked we would have better clinical outcomes than countries who spend less – we don’t.
September 8, 2021
I agree it will go to the NHS forever. Once the backlogs are cleared, if they ever are, any government who tries to move the cash to social care will be vilified when the MSM, NHS and opposition shout, you’re cutting funding to the NHS.
We now call our GP Dr Dolittle because no one can get to see her face to face.
Sir John… Will the charge for social care in with the council tax be removed now? Or will it be another nice little earner for WBC?
September 8, 2021
The backlogs will never be cleared.
September 8, 2021
This is yet another political con job, rushed through to the vote before anyone has had the opportunity to scrutinise it properly. Johnson is out of control, spraying other people’s money in wasteful ways in all directions at once. He is careless about the consequences for the national finances, which will be dire. But he does not care. He is yet another here today, gone tomorrow politician only interested in the millions he hopes to make once he leaves office (like his predecessors).
September 8, 2021
Old timer,
True.
A further trick from the Theresa May playbook – keep cabinet in the dark until the last minute and then threaten them with dismissal if they do not comply.
September 8, 2021
It’s disappointing, isn’t it, Oldtimer? Boris Johnson has been captured by the cultural marxist establishment, like many of his predecessors.
September 8, 2021
Oh dear itās going to need a rebellion by Conservative MPs who arenāt concerned about getting ministerial positions to scotch this dumb and badly thought through proposal. It needs to get scotched I assume before the budget as we canāt have MPs voting against that.
Any more focus-group driven leftist populism from Boris and I fear we will have to open the question of whether he really is the right person to lead the govt, despite the superb achievement of the last election, which is what he was elected to get done in the first place.
September 8, 2021
Richard1 We definitely need a rebellion of the back benchers. I’ve written to mine pointing out that his party’s policies may well lose him his marginal seat.
Alternatives are gathering strength again. And there is talk of Independents. If neither are on offer there is N.O.T.A.
The two main Parties taking it in turn to rule needs to be changed.
September 8, 2021
No amount of money will put right the fundamental problems one being, as someone has already mentioned, waste.
I believe we have in the NHS as we do in every institution now (the long march has paid off) ‘diversity’ officers or some such title, to go along with all the other layers of management paid God alone knows how much for clip board carrying.
With family members in the nursing profession this seems to be a very big gripe, so much so that they no longer wish to work within NHS.
I believe the new CEO is very much within Johnson’s ‘build back more feminine’ agenda.
‘I want to make it (NHS) somewhere that embraces diversity and inclusion at the core’ she gushes.
How about getting the GP’s back to work? Perhaps we could clear out the dross and over paid layers of clip board Kings.
A war on slovenly couldn’t care less staff that has cost lives would also be worth the money.
Just a few suggestions, but no we will be accosted if we seek medical help as we are everywhere else with this incessant ‘diversity’ clap trap.
This is more likely where the money will go.
September 8, 2021
Michelle, One of the things I have seen is two near identical production facilities – one in the USA, and one in the UK. The whole production hall in the USA was run by one man (although the packed product was taken away by additional fork-lift drivers). In contrast the UK plant had dozens of people in their hall – most with clipboards, as you observe – all supposedly making the plant run “more efficiently” (plus the usual fork-lift truck drivers). No wonder our productivity is so low compared to the USA.
September 8, 2021
I wonder why we are expected to believe that this extra money will actually be used to provide care?
Why are WE being expected to pay for this so-called āgovernmentāsā crazy escapades?
Its ludicrous, global follow my leaderā¦.blindfolded!
September 8, 2021
Dear Sir John–Boris is trying to do at least something, instead of further prevarification. It is obvious enough why the NHS needs money but I would be a wiser man if I could understand where large costs and cost increases in the Care sector actually go. I have had recent (in some cases ghastly) experience of a range of the type of places involved, watching an old friend gradually die from terminal brain cancer, and getting trnsferred from one home to the next (and in one case back again because of a preceived, but acknowledged to be temporary, improvement) and it seemed to me that that there were no fancy modern expensive machines to pay for, premises that looked to me like minimally converted large Victorian houses, not too bad in themselves, and then at the end a small Charity-run hospice, meaning that the bulk of the need must be wages and I imagine that they can only go up so much. Worrying about whether taxes are hypothecated or sequestrated or whatever leaves me cold. Give the Care Home sector what it needs now and Yes what the NHS what it needs now as well. In my opinion it is imbecilic to believe other than that taxes need to go up now.
September 8, 2021
Leslie
They were discussing costs etc on GB News the other evening and the homes that are run by big companies are making very large profits. Something needs to be done about this. Of course homes have to make a decent profit for continual improvements and for buying essentials but apparently these profits are astronomical. My sister has been a care assistant for many years now and her wages are appalling. She works permanent nights doing 48 hours a week working with patients who have dementia and it is not a glamorous job by any means. She has been kicked, punched and spat at and has to deal with the sorts of things most of us would never consder dealing with. Her home is permanently understaffed so my sister gets offered overtime most weeks. Recruiting staff is not easy.
September 8, 2021
Thanks to the Government’s ludicrous Covid policy and effectively turning the NHS into the National Covid Service, we currently have around 5 million people on the waiting list and, as Johnson admitted yesterday, this is going to grow. Predictions have been made that it could result in as many as 13 million on the waiting list.
The announcement yesterday had nothing to do with funding social care and everything to do with the Government trying to dig itself out of a hole of its own making. For the first 3 years the money will be shovelled into the bottomless pit of an inefficient, over-bureaucratised NHS in a desperate attempt to get the waiting list down to “a respectable level” before the next General Election and hope to neuter Labour’s perennial General Election slogan that “the NHS isn’t safe in Tory hands.”
It’s the straightforward breaking of a Manifesto pledge; will hit the working population, many of whom have already been hit by the lockdown/Covid restrictions and will do nothing to improve social care.
September 8, 2021
Thereās only one manifesto to trust ā that of the Monster Raving Loony Party
September 8, 2021
So, the chickens come home to roost. The sum to be raised by these most unwelcome measures would appear to be ~Ā£35billion which, coincedentally, is close to the Ā£37billion blown on Hancock and Harding’s useless Test and Trace. No wonder that Hancock was heckled and jeered from both sides of the house when he got up to claim the credit yesterday.
As always with proposals prepared by civil servants, the devil is in the detail. The Ā£86,000 lifetime cap is nonsense, once reached the unfortunate pensioners will still have to pay additional sums for food, rent, heating etc. Last night the figure of Ā£1000/month was being widely reported across the news media
The announcement of the scrapping of the triple lock link with wage growth spells the end of this highly popular support measure for pensioner income. It is foolish to think that it will be restored, as claimed, after a year. It will not. And as inflation soars next year, the next bit to go will be the link with inflation. Only for a year, of course. The fabulously wealthy Sunak has long wanted to soak the pensioners/poor on benefits to pay for his furlough largesse. The single mothers will miss the extra Ā£20/week of universal credit that will go next in October.
The pensioners value the triple lock – and do not like the breaking of manifesto pledges. Neither do they, or the public, like being lied to – in spades – by their PM. Johnson’s repeated mendacity may just have lost the party the next election.
September 8, 2021
It does look as if the Government has fallen into the trap of “Something must be done, this is something, so let us do it for we do not know what ought to be done”.
You have hitherto set out a much more welcome vision of what the Exchequer could be doing than is being offered by Mr. Sunak and his pessimists in H.M. Treasury. That vision is even more welcome in the light of the Government’s maladroit moves on tax for social care. Why do Ministers persist in providing bad policy?
September 8, 2021
The aim of these proposals is clear. To get poorer younger people who actually pay National Insurance to fund the care of richer older people who donāt pay National Insurance. Older people mostly vote Conservative, younger people mostly donāt.
Still your generation is used to thieving from your childrenās and grandchildrenās generations. Plus Ƨa change.
September 8, 2021
Andy : āStill your generation is used to thieving from your childrenās and grandchildrenās generations. Plus Ƨa change.ā
I think this is true of all generations, some more than others.
Many of my fatherās generation died fighting a war to prevent Europe, including the UK, being overrun by the German Nazis.
Paying additional N.I. pales into insignificance in comparison.
September 8, 2021
Who do you think will pay for your state Pension and health care Andy?
Or don’t you expect to get old??
September 8, 2021
I donāt expect there to be a state pension left by the time Iām old. Which is why I object to paying Ā£100k+ plus a year in taxes to fund yours.
September 9, 2021
Andy, You benefit directly from the law of contracts. And no advanced civilised society could exist without confidence in contracts. So why do you frequently advocate the destruction of the state pension contract? You seem to think you can pick and choose which to honour, like any old banana republic dictator. You would get the same result, which makes you as dim as the man sawing off the branch he’s sitting on.
September 8, 2021
As they say āIf youāre not a liberal when youāre 25, you have no heart. If youāre not a conservative by the time youāre 35, you have no brain.ā
Except of course Labour, Lib dims and the Conservatives are now all tax borrow and piss down the drain green crap socialists anyway.
September 8, 2021
In terms of thieving from children’s and grandchildren’s nothing beats INHERITANCE TAX.
So Andy, should we be removing Inheritance Tax to ensure you younger people get the full benefit of your parent’s lifetime of working and saving?
September 8, 2021
A classic shot in foot, niave Andy…..
September 8, 2021
A study in 2018 found 96% of estates in this country donāt pay inheritance tax. Should the very wealthiest pay inheritance tax? You bet.
Incidentally, I fall in the category that will have to pay inheritance tax and I suspect you donāt.
September 9, 2021
Wrong again silly young Andy. I’m afraid we didn’t inherit, but our offspring will have to pay IHT. A foolish head full of nonsense…
September 8, 2021
Seems so.
September 8, 2021
You tell us that the young mostly welcome immigration, so they deserve to be taxed, and deserve what is coming to them as a result of immigration.
September 8, 2021
Andy, If you don’t think that the state should fund pensions, healthcare, education, social care, end-of-life care, etc, out of general taxation, then you should be honest enough to say so as a principle. I am in favour of less (but not no) state provision, yet apart from your hobby-horse ageist bigotry, you seem to think more state and more coercion is the way to go. You can’t have it both ways. If state-funded care for the (usually poor) elderly is in principle open to question, then so should state-funded Primary and Secondary education. And the NHS. Good luck with that.
September 8, 2021
+10
September 8, 2021
I donāt think the state should fund pensions or social care for the elderly at all. Not just out of general taxation. I donāt think this stuff should be funded AT ALL.
The one certainty in life is that you will get older and eventually die. Why should I be funding your retirements when you lot didnāt pay enough into the system to fund yourselves?
I do not expect to get a state pension as I expect the system will more or less have been scrapped by then. But even if I do, my wife and I will get back, perhaps, Ā£10k a year when we have been paying more than that in to the pension system and old age care each month. What a crap investment for us. One we have no choice about.
Frankly, I resent paying for all of you to go on holiday when I could be paying off my mortgage.
September 8, 2021
Andy. I’m not normally like this but in your case I make an exception. I AM SO PLEASED YOU ARE GOING TO FUND MY PENSION NEXT YEAR. THANK YOU.
September 9, 2021
Andy, You pay high taxes (if you’re really as rich as you claim) because there is a wide consensus that the rich should contribute more. Have you made a case against that? No. In fact in the past you have endorsed it. Have you made an actual case against the state pension (taking account of all other state funded services)? No, again. Are your comments on here generally in favour of self-reliance and libertarian small government (which means leaving the EU empire)? No, you’ve denounced that view often. You are inconsistent, lacking in rational argument, and only notable for being adamant and authoritarian.
September 8, 2021
What an idiot comment once again from you Andy. Over half the social care budget is actually spent on the young. Who cares who it is spent on because if people need it regardless of age then we need to ensure the help is there. Just as we paid for our parents old age, so you and others pay the same.. It’s always been like this and one day, if you live long enough, you will be entitled to it too. Words fail me how one can be so stupid.
September 8, 2021
Never heard of the bank of Mum and Dad? We have paid the deposit on their houses, the stamp duty, bought them cars, paid for degrees – on top of all the usual costs of raising children. Weāve also given them money as part of our inheritance tax planning.
Yes we, along with all our friends, are really thieving from our children.
I donāt want NI to go up. It is absurd. If someone gets a 2% pay rise, most of it is gone before they get it. They give nurses 3% and take back 1.25%. Thatās thieving!
September 8, 2021
The backlog is clearly caused by staff, facilities, beds etc. being fully used by demands on their use. How will more money magic the extra people, beds, operating theatres etc. etc. needed to catch up?
The extra money therefore will just disappear into the NHS sinkhole and, surprise surprise, the cry will soon be -more money please to clear the backlog!
September 8, 2021
From the party for the idle.
The rich idle face no extra property taxes, no extra capital gains, a modicum on dividend yields which can be kept below a couple of %.
The poor idle arrive in dinghies or don’t work anyway and pay nothing and nothing extra.
September 8, 2021
If one generation is expected to carry an excessive burden on behalf of another, it will seek by every means to avoid it. It will either demand that past promises are broken, or it will not work, or it will not pay taxes, or the most talented people will leave. Socialist governments which have tried to tax ’till the pips squeak’ have ample experience of that.
Margaret Thatcher
September 8, 2021
@ Sir Joe Soap – it does beg the question, why is it OK for Government to run a ‘Ponzi Scheme’ yet if others try it the get a go straight to jail card
September 8, 2021
Actually ātheyā have now blown the lid right off.
As all knew..nothing to do with a virus.
All about following the global plan.
Minister saying EXAMS MAY NOT GO AHEAD NEXT YEAR!
Again.
If ātheyā had such super powers of second sight we would not be in this mess.
Or any of the other messes ātheyā have created!
September 8, 2021
I will never understand this. Free prescriptions in all of the U.K. except England. Free tuition, except England. Free health care , indeed free everything for anyone illegally landing on our shores. Indeed straight to the front of the queue. The NHS is now a world service and it seems the English are paying the price. Now we are considering making English above 60 pay for prescriptions. There seems to be a huge imbalance in all this.
So Boris is not doing well, letās get brexit done, he failed. I will look at the Waspi situation, he failed. I will not raise NI, He failed, we will keep the triple lock he failed. We are the party of low taxation, he failed. We will stop illegal immigration, he failed.
There are so many areas where money could be saved, the public seem to know where they are. HS2 however, mind you it would probably cost more in compensation to stop it than to complete it. Abolish the Lords. Stop free legal aid for illegal immigrants. The Australians seem to be able to put illegals an a plane the same day! Reduce the amount that is spent on legal aid in general 5 Million a day is a sad joke.
I think it is time they did a time and motion study on all the public sector to see how it can be reduced, like the did with the army back in the 80ās. Start with Parliament, devolved Government, itās not working anyway. Then diversity officers and advisors. I could go on. Is it any wonder that people get angry when they see so much wasted while government, local and national dig deeper into the ever decreasing pocket. The arrogance is nearly on a par, or even exceeding that of the BBC.
He has succeeded in bring the integrity of the Conservative party into disrepute. Who will believe a word at the next election. Not a single word.
September 8, 2021
BW. Who will believe a word at the next election. Not a single word.
How many of us believed much of what he said anyway?
September 8, 2021
Future manifestos are meaningless
September 8, 2021
The devil is in the detail, and until that detail is published properly, and a debate held, there should NOT be a vote on this policy.
Already we are hearing that the so called “Social Care Cap” only includes social care costs, and when in a care home situation it will not include any of the other costs like board and keep, which can form part of the major costs per month. I am now hearing via the tv news whilst I type this, that some medical care is also not included, like dementure care in all of its forms. What an absolute pigs ear all of this appears to be.
Who has actually thought this through and has suggested these proposals JR, has any of it been discussed in Cabinet ?
Now we also have the Triple lock scrapped for one year because its formula is not convenient this year, because wages have risen more than expected, when the whole idea of the triple lock in the first place was to preserve and slowly and slightly increase the spending power of the State Pension because it is one of the lowest in the developed World.
If the Government wants to save money, then stop wasting billions of it !
Vote these farcical proposals down, and let us have a real and proper discussion on the future of care and Pension provision.
September 8, 2021
Come on Alan. Be fair. Boris probably sat down to dinner with Carrie and decided all this and alot of other things too.
September 8, 2021
Things just get weirder by the day under this Socialist Government. It hears its metro left WOKE, those that don’t support it in any way. Yet it ignores the rest of the UK, those that enabled it to get into office.
With the highest taxes this country has seen in 70years, the Government has lost control of its own house keeping. Work for the State and the rewards keep flowing, work in the general population and you get squeezed from every direction. That’s the real disparity and equality the UK has to endure from this Government.
The NHI increase gives the Government an addition 10% contribution, will we see a 10% improvement in the offerings? This equates to an extra Ā£4billion a year. In the last year the Government has awarded the NHS Ā£20 billion extra to cope with the pandemic of that 15million has been spent, Ā£2.7billion went on extra staffing costs – the other Ā£12.3 billion remains unaccounted for?
September 8, 2021
+1
According to msm the NHS is already clamouring for an additional Ā£3.5 million per year!
On top of NI rise!
I wondered this morning if Johnson fondly imagined that all the clapping š¤®would fend off his Union masters?
Appease them with flattery?
Didnāt work!
September 8, 2021
This tax removes any pretence of this being a conservative Government . Socialist levels of taxation (and waste), pursuing a Marxist culture agenda, ruinous Green policies, left wing and Globalist levels of immigration, etc. I struggle to think of a single tokenistic policy that might give a hint to it being a Conservative Government . Can a political party be done for breaching the trade descriptions act?
September 8, 2021
Johnson was well known for favouring immigration and for advocating and amnesty for illegal immigrants, yet he was still elected as the party leader.
September 8, 2021
+1
September 8, 2021
Apparently it is a confidence vote in the Prime Minister – A chance to stop the madness for you and your backbench colleagues Sir John.
Does the Conservative party have the cohones? Or will we have to suffer more left wing policy for two further years?
September 8, 2021
N S,
The radio news says a back bench rebellion is not likely.
There may be continued infighting for the PM role, but even with a different PM we would be in the same boat.
September 8, 2021
The sheep will vote with Boris, tory MPs haven’t the backbone….I wonder other manifesto pledges the tories will cull
September 8, 2021
..and annuver fing
Like this
” Will the Government really allow NHS budgets to fall after backlogs are cleared to fund social care, or will this mean a permanent NHS baseline increase, with social care scrambling for funds later? To ask the question, I think, answers it ”
Quite so . I find the on going betrayal by this Government beneath even my low expectations
September 8, 2021
Newmania, Now we have BINO, funding for the NHS has gone up by Ā£20bn+ compared with 2015-2016. Just thought you’d like to know. It would be a good idea for the government to put that fact on the side of a bus, don’t you think?
September 8, 2021
The real concern for all of us, no matter how well meaning the gesture appears would you trust this Government with more of your money. The have shown they are prolific wasteful spenders, never concerned the why’s and the how’s just the ‘grandstanding political gesture’.
It still gets back to a Government that is prepared to destroy an economy to stroke an ego. Not understanding that no economy means less tax income. A simple focus on creating a strong resilient economy would permit all the ‘virtue signals’ and ‘grandstanding’ to may be even come to fruition.
September 8, 2021
The government, shamefully, used the furor over the huge tax rise yesterday to announce that all restrictions on the English water/sewage companies over sewage discharges to our rivers and seas will be scrapped. Allegedly due to shortages of treatment chemicals caused by the lack of HGV drivers. The “Environment” Agency QUANGO will now issue them with “permits to pollute” in order to protect their shareholders from further prosecution
The water/sewage companies will still be allowed to charge their customers for sewage treatment though. This change is due to intense lobbying by shareholders of Southern Water, who object to being fined Ā£90million recently over their illegal dumping of tremendous amounts of sewage across the Kent and Hampshire beaches.
The government should pre-empt the Labour policy to nationalise the English water/sewage companies and do so itself. PDQ.
September 8, 2021
If water companies were state owned the same problems would continue.
You are fooling yourself if you think nationalisation would result in anything different.
September 8, 2021
P2, as realised this morning studying your coffee marc?
And canāt you think a bit out of the nationalisation/privatisation frame. There are other ways of dealing with water distribution and treatment like the cooperatives in Quebec.
Otherwise, what about what is done in Germany, Italy or France where most of the capture, distribution and treatment of water is the responsibility of municipalities (or groups of them) and their dedicated services. For example, there are more than 33,000 such services in France.
One main advantage is that in case of problems the group of persons responsible is within a short driving distance. Which allows angry consumers to go and sequester the culprits. Democracy in action!
And there is no dividend to be paid to the shareholders.
September 9, 2021
Sakara Gold spoke of his desire to see Labour’s policy of renationalisation of the water companies.
Did you miss that bit in your grumpy hurry to post?
September 9, 2021
P2, No, I didnāt miss your abhorrence for anything state-related.
September 9, 2021
So first you responded with a post about other ways of owning utilities and then when I pointed out the Sakara said he (or she) wanted just the Labour policy of renationalisation, instead of saying, oh dear I see now sorry, as is typical, you come back with an ad hominem comment that you claim I have an abhorrence for anything state related.
Which is completely ridiculously wrong.
September 8, 2021
Well spotted, Sakara.
September 8, 2021
It’s also down to supply chain disruption caused by Brexit.
I supposed there is a bit of irony about Brexit being the cause of increased quantities of dumped raw sewage…
September 8, 2021
Did Brexit cause Covid then Peter?
Loads of HGV drivers pinged and off work for two weeks and others who got ill and couldn’t work for weeks
Tens of thousands of European drivers went home during the lockdown.
Tens of thousands of agency drivers realised how IR 35 would negatively affect their pay and got out of the industry.
Then there are tens of thousands of drivers waiting for a medical test or a driving test.
But to you it is all brexit.
September 8, 2021
SK, Between end of May 2021 and today, Macquarie Infrastructure LLC, the owner of Southern Water, has seen its share going from $35 to just below $40? What is not to be liked, +14% in a bit more than three months, by investors at least. But what about OFWAT, does its duty not include defending the consumers?
And on a larger scale IH2O, an ETF including numerous international water distribution/sewerage/water treatment companies, moved from Ā£42 to Ā£51 in a year (+21%) in a sector unlikely to fizzle out in the present weather/climate circumstances. At least the dividends will help paying for bottled water š.
September 8, 2021
@hefner
You are mistaken in your belief that Macquarie own Southern Water. Currently the largest shareholders are JP Morgan Asset Management (40%), UBS Asset Management (22%), Hermes Infrastructure Funds (21%) and Whitehelm Capital (8%)
In June 2019, Ofwat proposed a fine of Ā£126 million as a result of Southern Water’s failures to operate its wastewater treatment works properly and deliberately misreporting its performance. In 2020, Southern Water pleaded guilty to 51 offences related to dumping untreated sewage into the sea and was fined Ā£90m. It was described as “the worst case brought by the Environment Agency in its history.”
September 9, 2021
SK, oops, sorry for this misleading comment.
September 8, 2021
+1
September 8, 2021
The effects of this will be far reaching, and damage European Union fishing grounds etc. too.
I wonder what, e.g. the French might do in response?
September 9, 2021
Only because the EU empire still controls our fish, Martin.
September 8, 2021
In most countries water and energy are owned by the government. In Scotland water is still owned this way.
September 8, 2021
Johnson is a fool hiding behind words( typical journalist) so most of my friends have had enough! They are all Conservative leaning but few will renew their support for the party as we cannot risk another spell of the bully.
My main hope is that enough of the intelligent and very experienced MPās such as your self keep your seat. Parrots like Saxby , our Conservative MP will definitely go as we must make sure hes gone.
We need a balance of good steady Mpās to stop the left wing Green Loons wreaking the same havoc as Boris. Dangerous Times
September 8, 2021
There can be no surprise whatsoever about this Conservative government breaking promises and putting up taxes. General government deficit (net borrowing) was Ā£63.3 billion at the end of FYE March 2020, Ā£304 billion at the end of FYE March 2021. How could Ā£204 billion of extra borrowing thanks to lockdowns be paid for, other than by massive tax rises? Super-dynamic economic growth? Hardly likely to happen, since the government has decimated independent businesses that pay taxes, and handed the economy over to the likes of Amazon, Netflix and Zoom, who are good at dodging them. Runaway inflation? Huge public sector cuts? There are no good options. Johnson and his crew will eventually have to face the voters, so they probably think that tax rises badged as being for ‘social care’ are the least worst. After all, voters tend to be older people who will need social care sooner than 20-year olds .
September 8, 2021
It is Government that needs to get its house in order, they have increased the State and its spending exponentially. They have employed more and more of the freeloading chums. They are now sitting on the largest tax take in 70years and still pouring it down the drain. They have not yet seen they are the CEO’s of what could be a great UK Plc, they are directly responsible for every penny spent but choose absolve themselves from caring. Every quarter of taxpayer funding needs to ensure it is directly responsible, has someone held accountable in fear of replacement, to the taxpayer – the shareholder.
The shareholder are and should be getting restless.
If they cant get their own house in order despite election promises, no matter how much of ‘our’ money they take it will be for ‘naught’.
Its the ‘economy stupid’
September 8, 2021
Yet another object in financial can kicking. The NHS is a black hole and unlikely to be able to return in due course the initial injection represented by this tax rise. This Government has lost its grip
September 8, 2021
Slightly being unfair to the NHS, but the easiest one to illustrate a situation that should be untenable. The individual well paid administrators of our health services are paid by the taxpayer, but not accountable to them. The Health Minister in the cabinet, is not as implied the UK Health Minister(English Minister only) and is not accountable for the money the staff in the Health system spends.
That is not a Government in control or taking responsibility of their own taxpayer funded existence, that is neglect, in any Corporation this lazy attitude to resources(taxes) would see heads roll.
This is the weakest Government following on from other weak Governments that the UK has had in a generation. The Political system is in neglect of not serving the people, they are in neglect for permitting taxes to be used as confetti.
If they were to employ a 100% tax from every source in the UK they would still not come up with a result – they don’t care as long as they at a personal level get to award themselves they are happy. The rest of you go take a hike. All the money the need for real funding of real concerns was already there – just being poured down the drain
September 8, 2021
It seems to me the Government is going along with the dishonest pretence by the media that “social care” is already nationalised and the responsibility of the Chancellor. This started in the pandemic when the media wanted to make the PM personally responsible for what happened in thousands of private nursing homes, i.e. personally responsible for every death in a nursing home. Those private nursing homes, and the ones which are not private, are in fact under the regulation of local government, not HMG. It is local government which sends people to private nursing homes when they are deemed not able to pay, and the private payers in those nursing homes who top up the shortfall for councils. None of this has been discussed, though it may have been in private. Do we in fact want to nationalise nursing homes? How much would it cost? Would they be better?
September 8, 2021
I thought tax changes were announced by the Chancellor in the Budget, not by the PM and Chancellor at another time. Can you explain?
September 8, 2021
You are understating your case, Sir John. Another new tax ā the āhealth and social care tax” complicates the tax and NI system even further. Breaking a manifesto pledge like this should not be accepted lightly. And, of course, it is a tax on jobs and growth when we need more tax and growth. Small company directors on the basic income tax rate will pay 9% more on their dividends than they did a few years ago.
But I wouldnāt put it past this government to engineer a Commons defeat and then come up with something even worse.
September 8, 2021
should say “more jobs and growth”, not “more tax and growth”.
September 8, 2021
Thing is, the hospital deal with the cost of person going into nursing home not the local council, the council only pay for care homes, the people being left in hospital which is called bedblocking and is taking up over 30 per cent of beds available and leads to lost opertations and bigger waiting lists, they won,t pay out, leaving people in hospital for years on end till they died, what away to go.No end of life quality at all
September 8, 2021
Dear Sir John,
Important as all these issues are (NHS Costs) etc and must be discussed, I think most Tories now are aware and more concerned by the decline of the Western World / Western Civilisation. My brother in-law-who is pretty right-wing Tory (and ex army, good university and school) and works in The City and for me is the barometer for what lots of other Tories are thinking (for his family are directly related to the running of the Tory Party) was only talking about this with me at the weekend. That our Western World / Western Civilisation – is fast in decline. And that’s really serious. A strong economy can only exist on top of a strong civilisation. Without a strong civilisation, the economy eventually crumbles / collapses with it.
The Tory Party really has to address this. It’s huge. And at the forefront of so many Tory voters. How / what is the Tory Party going to do (politicians and its supporters) to decline the halt of Western Civilisation, at least here in the UK. How are we going to restore all the values upon which a healthy civilisation rests:
1) Strong Family / Institution of Marriage
2) Strong Work Ethic
3) Strong sense of Public Duty / Patriotism
4) Strong Arts
5) Strong Armed Forces
6) Strong Science
7) Strong Education
8) Strong Health – mental and physical and so on
And so on.
Get all these right, and Tax and Crime HUGELY decrease. Get these right, and general happiness, well-being, productivity and so on increase.
This isn’t just about politics. But it’s certainly about politicians taking a LEAD in starting the debate about what we do to halt Western Civilisation at least here in the UK. And a debate that needs to be had with people in all these fields, including religious leaders (for civilisation depends on moral codes as well – otherwise its each man for himself and you get chaos). Then politicians can do more – via Parliament and law – to at least make things better from the POV of the (limited) power politicians do have. But it’s not just about what they can do but also taking leadership in debating what can be done.
Best
September 8, 2021
It’s hard to disagree with the comments above, but the whole thing does show a remarkable lack of clarity by the government in terms of what actually should be done.
How anyone can believe in the mantra;
When nothing – absolutely nothing, is being done to get rid of the waste and inefficiencies in the box ticking NHS system!
Boris has lost the plot. Rather than slim down big government, he makes it worse by throwing money at problems, which is a very socialist thing to do, that produces no result at all! Rather than cut the quangos down to size and save Ā£billions, he’d rather make paupers of us all.
Do we need any further evidence that Boris is no longer a conservative. All the socialist leaders I can imagine would have been proud of this move.
Of the Ā£Billions raised by this tax, a portion will go to Wales and Scotland, even though this tax applies in England only — Yet more proof of the inequalities that devolution gave us. The English are still subsidising the others!
On top of all the increases in the cost of living and other taxes Boris has scheduled to implement his nightmare NET-ZERO, this levy is well beyond what is reasonable, talk about DAYLIGHT ROBBERY with a vengeance! It feels like we’re being repeatedly gang raped.
September 8, 2021
@Bryan. Can you clarify please John? Is this NI increase only for the English tax payers? If so then it really stinks. Of course Sturgeon and the Welsh first Minister Drakeford will accept the extra money with open arms. How is this right when they already get more freebies than the English? Why is there not more protest over this?
Reply NI is a UK tax and so is this supplement
September 9, 2021
That’s not what the BBC implied – they suggested it would only be paid by the English
September 8, 2021
I hope that, not just you, but other Conservatives, will be making these very good points in the House of Commons, and voting accordingly. All I have heard so far makes me sure that this is just a classic case of ‘Throw enough money at the problem in the hope it will go away’. It was very clear from the debate yesterday that little serious thinking has been done on either side about what the NHS will actually do with this money to deal with its problems, many of which are systemic and nothing to do with the pandemic. As you say, we should know far more about this aspect before we are asked to sign a blank cheque. The NHS is a sacred cow, but instead of yielding cream and milk, it just ingests limitless hay into its many stomachs. We need a Government which is capable of facing up to the difficult decisions need to change this, and nothing I heard yesterday makes me think that this Government is the one.
As for Social Care, I have a vested interest in this as my wife has Alzheimer’s and I am none the wiser how anything in practice will be changed.
September 8, 2021
So the Government are increasing taxation in part to address staffing levels in the NHS and social care. At the same time they are driving people out of these professions by making employment conditional on participation in medical experiments.
September 8, 2021
The Home Secretary Priti Patel is off to see the French today to grovel and ask why they are escorting large inflatable boats with outboard motors full of hundreds of economic migrants across La Manche – before handing them over to Border Force in the middle.
Last month, a group of national newspaper investigative journalists were reported to have identified three “Mr Bigs” who are organising the illegal transfer of economic migrants from France accross the Channel. These criminals, an Iranian, a Syrian and an Afghan were reported to have obtained “indefinate leave to remain” documentation from Priti Patel’s Home office and in one case, a National Insurance number. The sums involved are huge, Ā£10,000 per migrant was reported.
So why have these criminals not been apprehended by the authorities?
September 8, 2021
Sakara. They are hardly what I would call refugees if they can afford these sorts of prices to get here. What a farce it all is.
September 8, 2021
I agree with your comments SirJ however, your party, leadership and fellow MPs don’t….I fully expect all other tory MPs to vote with Boris today
September 8, 2021
Good morning – again
Admittedly I do not have my Council Tax Bill to hand but, part of the breakdown covered, I believe, Social Care. Is the government now saying that we have to now pay TWICE ?
The reason I argue why Social Care has risen to the top of the agenda is because of what is called, ‘Bed Blocking’. This is a practice where a Care Home sends one of its clients to the NHS for necessary care, only for the NHS Hospital to be told that they can no longer receive the patient due to no space being available in the Care Home. Hence the elderly person is stuck in hospital while they find somewhere for them to go. Perhaps if this practice was outlawed we might not need to add additional costs / taxes.
And history has proven, once a government gets a new tax, it has more, but never enough, to spend and is very reluctant to let that go.
Reply Social care is costly and needs more money than the Council tax part of it
September 8, 2021
How is the government proposing to charge all the businesses that use sub-contractors to get around paying NI, SSP.
Where the invoices of their ‘workers’ are as a primary contractor to the once source of income. Do they just get away with yet another employer contribution holiday?
September 8, 2021
The more I read about this proposal the more concerned I become. It’s a complete dog’s dinner.
Extra money for the NHS is being provided with a fudged amount for Social Care. Even the terms of the social care to be paid for are designed to be confusing. I suspect that in the end all the money will be consumed into the bottomless pit that is the NHS and we will be back where we started, just with a huge tax rise that has achieved nothing.
Instead, long term care should be integrated into the NHS system with two separate budgets and clearly defined boundaries. Private care homes would be sub contractors. That system works well with GPs, doesn’t it ?
The government should then separate out all NHS spending, reduce income tax and increasing National Insurance so that NI contributions are a hypothecated tax just for the NHS.
A three year rolling budget should then be proposed by an NHS board without any politicians as members and debated by Parliament.
Perhaps if taxpayers knew exactly what they are paying for the NHS and its social care subsidiary, they would be more demanding of value for money ? The Holier-than-thou attitude to “our NHS” would also end. It would then be seen by its customers as another service that can be criticised whenever it fails.
Not before time.
September 8, 2021
Dear Andy, as one of your hated Brexit pensioners, I agree that it would be better to fund this NHS bounty through a 2 or 3 percentage point rise in income tax, which would also be paid by retired folk with occupational pensions, avoid the lowest earners and be paid right up the income scale. If you could rise for a moment above your usual offensive loathing , you would however note that young people on low incomes have been financing the old and sick through NI ever since the postwar welfare state was created. It is the essence of that system.
September 8, 2021
+1
September 8, 2021
Exactly. During this time the “young people on low incomes” became the “old and sick”. Andy seems to live on a planet where that does not happen.
September 8, 2021
A 3-year ‘Whuhan-flu’ levy would be acceptable and its temporary nature might escape allegations of a broken manifesto pledge. A new ‘forever tax’ hypothecated for the NHS and Social Care is not acceptable. It doesn’t raise enough to fix the problems of either and, if the BBC and press reports are correct, the announced Ā£86k cap on an individual’s payment of social care costs is a sham because costs of living and accommodation will still be uncapped and charged extra.
September 8, 2021
Dear Sir John, The NHS will always be “in crisis” as long as it contiues to grow ever bigger and all-encompassing. As its thinking is always dominated by the critical care hospital sector, social care, mental health and “primary care” will always remain poor relations, however much lip service is paid to them. These are actually the sectors that are really in crisis as a result of Covid yet it is obvious that they will get little of this extra money, certainly for the first two years, probably ever.
September 8, 2021
Please correct Whuhan to Wuhan.
September 8, 2021
As you imply, a dogs breakfast of a solution to two fundamental problems. The enormous and expanding backlog in NHS treatment and quite separately the question of inadequate social care.
With inadequate in numbers of nurses, doctors and medical support services, all of whom can take 5 to 15 years to train, where are they going to come from without denuding overseas countries of their medical staff. Has any one considered buying services abroad and sending patients overseas. Minus a detailed plan we will be just throwing money away. Why do we need multi tiered levels of very expensive administration of questionable useful function. A great potential for saving money.
How about all people paying a tax levy ring fenced to provide a high level social care system for those who need it. Preferably organised outside government where there is no contrrol of what tax is spent on, leading to obscenities like HS2. It would be a case of everyone pays and those who need it benefitting.
September 8, 2021
More to the left than Labour much more – am sure Jeremy Corbyn had a cheeky smile on his face this morning as he donned his Lenin style cap
September 8, 2021
“If social care needs more maybe some less urgent or desirable expenditures should be discontinued.”
Sir John,
I couldn’t agree more. I’m sure some of your regular contributors could make a few suggestions.
September 8, 2021
Maybe cancel HS2 to fund Social-Care…..an option which hasn’t been mentioned today by ANY MP
September 8, 2021
The NHS is a vast, voracious beast that will never ever have enough money, no matter what. Why has no government ever looked closely into the way it is managed and insist on changes being made? For example, why does the NHS need to employ very expensive ‘diversity managers’ and other hangers on that do nothing whatsoever to improve the service for patients? Who cares about diversity, race, gender or any other ‘ism when they are sick and need proper medical care?
September 8, 2021
Like you say john, means testing on poorer population but no means testing on richer people who can afford their own.
September 8, 2021
How is it that rich always ride on coat tails of the poor and come out with a better deal from the gov.
September 8, 2021
Only plebs have to jump through hoops.
September 8, 2021
I have voted Con for decades, not because I admired or even respected Tory leaders but just to keep wasteful, economically disastrous Labour out of power. My vote for Thatcher was an exception. Now the Cons are leftists so the choice is just the least worst option, which Boris is probably hoping will keep them in power.
Conservative voters have nowhere to go, as a vote for a small party gets you nowhere in the FPTP system.
If the leftists in charge included a good many who actually understood technology we might have a chance of avoiding bankruptcy through climate change insanity. With the existing mob of hysterical waffling dreamers on both sides we are doomed.
As for the NHS, anyone who has experienced excellent health care in other first world countries will tell you that a system where users pay a share of the cost is the only effective way to run a modern health service. It ensures that everything is properly accounted for which seems to be an entirely alien concept in the NHS. It can also create competition between hospitals and clinics so that they treat patients as valued customers and not nuisances to be fobbed off with excuses.
September 8, 2021
Funny how there is no mechanism for turning away boat-comers.
No way or expectation of securing our borders.
Yet from the moment of landing a well oiled machine kicks in to provide all necessities.
Clearly there is an ( accurate!!!) prediction of numbers expected.
We are being fed a pack of liesā¦as ever!
September 8, 2021
What a massive own goal this for the Government.
How about a policy of reducing wasteful expenditure before taxing people ever more?
Of course that won’t happen as it is “too much hard work” for those involved. As ever the easy option is just to tax people even more money, which to be honest really isn’t on.
It is almost as if the Conservatives WANT to lose the next election. Carry on the way you are going and that 80 seat majority will most certainly evaporate – and you will have no one but yourselves to blame for that.
September 8, 2021
Off Topic for today:
The only discussion Mrs Patel should have with the French is that any migrants found in the English Channel will be returned to France…
September 8, 2021
Know Dice. It always amazes me that people think it’s ok for us to continue for years to come to accept thousands every year. Nobody ever comments on the fact that we are very small in comparison to the likes of Germany, France and Spain.
September 8, 2021
To my mind it is the job of local MP to sort this out not the gov, it is their reponsibility to make sure that people who live in their area are treated right and receive their human rights, john, you should be going down to your local hospital to get this sorted out without any extra money to give them managers just court order to remove bedblocks from the hosiptal. Think of the people in your area in pain. You can not run hosiptal with bedblocking, the hosiptals we have today were never design for bedblocking. You are lettling the hosiptals break the law which leads to more bad treatment for the people, instead MPs giving BS speechs in the common they should out doing their job.
September 8, 2021
The public have long complained that taxes are not hypothecated and the government (and all parties) have always refused to go along with it. So why now a sudden change ?
This sets a precedent and what comes next ? A tax to fund extra teachers, doctors. dentists and so on ?
I agree that spending tax revenues is about prioritisation along with looking at what other funding mechanisms are in place. Older people are looking at their life savings and property disappearing already and it seems those that have worked and saved are penalised. Not very Conservative would you say ?
It seems MP’s have time to stop this before it comes in and perhaps its time that MP’s actually listened to their constituents. This is a dangerous precedent without much thought or consideration around actual forecasts and revenues.
The PM who landed a great GE victory is fast becoming a liability with his policies and tax plan. Boris OUT.
September 8, 2021
pouring money into an unreformed health and social care system will not end well….
September 8, 2021
Thats okay the social-care will never see a penny of it, the NHS will get some to fund higher salaries but the rest will be used as general revenue and therefore for general expenditure
We’ve got to keep the trains on track
September 8, 2021
I will be very interested to see how the government will track how much people have paid towards their care already? My mother pays about Ā£1000 a month for care from the council in her home, will that count, is anyone keeping total of that?
September 8, 2021
My Solution: not totally relevant, but a long way to solving the crisis.
Make university student grants simply index-linked rather than a usurious rate.
Halve the number of students going to university and encourage more to take up apprenticeships.
Further increase the number of medical schools and thereby the number of medical students.
Pay GPs for the number of patients they see face-to-face per annum rather than the number of patients that they have on their NHS lists.
Stop the demand that all prospective nurses go to university for three years. Nursing is essentially a practical occupation, rather than academic. It does not need to be a graduate profession. The requirement for a degree deters many highly-suitable applicants.
Demand that newly-qualified doctors spend at least five years in the NHS after qualifying, rather than going abroad. Otherwise demand that they repay the cost of their medical education.
Treat the GP service rather like the dental service, where patients are made to make a means-tested contribution to their treatment. If dentists can cope with the administration, surely GPs can.
Change the qualifications necessary for the selection of medical students and interview all applicants. Students require an average academic ability and education and need to have genuine empathy for people rather than three A stars at A level. One reason there is a difficulty recruiting students to become GPs; is that too many high-fliers do not wish to do hum-drum GP work.
Change the pension rules that are forcing many older GPs to retire early.
Discourage GPs from taking on externally renumerated work and insist that they focus on their NHS practices.
September 8, 2021
NHS in the UK is a politically run monolith with some 2,5million employees. The Unions get to attack the Government of the day, because they can. The care side of the industry is in a large part in private hands. All the power is distanced from the payee – the taxpayer.
Both sectors keep demanding more from the beleaguered taxpayer and Governments are to freighted to take responsibility to sort things out. In the firing line are the everyday staff in the system(they’ve done nothing wrong), the patient(they’ve done nothing wrong) and the taxpayer(they’ve done nothing wrong). But every day the system fails, on the face of it, its not lack of money its lack of management ability by the powers that are charged with running the day to day structure. Lack of management ability inside Government to understand even the basics of managing on current form just about anything you can name.
Hitting hardworking people in the pocket while showing how reckless you are in managing what you take, therefore steal, just demonstrates further how far UK politics has become divorced from the people they serve.
September 8, 2021
Sir John, I don’t think you have mentioned the main elephant in the room.
No matter how much money is thrown at the N.H.S. sacred cow, it will never give value for money, because the money goes into the pockets of the ADMINISTRATORS not the doctors and nurses.
Same applies to Care as it is now and how it is to become.
September 8, 2021
There is over 30 thousand people trapped in hosiptals and taking up bed meant for people coming in to have operation if they have the staff on that day to do the operations, even if they made room for 10,000, it’s 50 thousand opertations extra a week instead of thousand operation a week being cancelled,, you would not hear about bedblocking in civilize country in Europe so why hear in England are the english people so far down the rabbit hole that MPs think that they not entiled to their HUMAN RIGHTS but REFUGEES are, this would never happen to a refuge in this country. They have HUMAN RIGHTS english people don’t have anyrights when in hosiptal, they just left to rot while staff sit around counting up their perks.
September 8, 2021
Reported today, tests for TB on the body of Geronimo the Alpaca have proved negative. What does this say about tests on the live Geronimo that supposedly proved positive. Is the weakness in the testing of live animals. The result puts the whole TB testing of live animals into question. Are they more cavalier than the post mortem.
September 8, 2021
More bad Tory optics. Good.
What of Covid testing then ?
But that poor animal … the sight of his abduction from his ‘parents’ could not have been sadder, instinctively knowing it was going to die. It’s almost as though the Minister has been set up to look wicked. At least the animal’s life will not have been lost in vain if it proves just how wrong the Tories can be.
September 8, 2021
I agree with Mick’s observation – don’t we already pay for social care in our local authority taxes, in which case what is this new social care funding for and who will control it?
Having seen what my parents experienced the last people I want controlling social care funding is the NHS wastrels.
With regards to NHS I would like to see a thorough investigation and accounting as the NHS should have spent far less over the last 18 months considering they have provided no general treatment, GP or dental services, physio, blood tests, asma or cardio reviews, as far as I am aware.
September 8, 2021
As someone who could gain from this change, I still find it morally wrong to ask poorer families to subsidise any care I may receive in later life.
September 8, 2021
Slightly off topic, but still questioning the governments actions.
In the spectator today, they talk about the Elections Bill. It seems The Electoral Commission, currently an independent body, will no longer be independent. The Secretary of State is on the speakers committee of the electoral commission and has been since 2019. But there is apparently a clause in the new bill that allows the Secretary of State (currently Michael Gove) to add or remove organisations or individuals from the list of regulated bodies. Surely this leaves things open to corruptionā¦?
In authoritarian states, the ability to nobble the ref is the first step on the road to one-party rule. David Howarth, a former Electoral Commissioner, said that policy control up to and including control of individual cases gives ministers the ability to interpret the Electoral Commission’s powers to favour the ruling party.
Also of concern is the removal of the fixed term Parliament Act. I thought this was a good move when I heard it was going, especially following on from the shenanigans during Brexit. After seeing the way government has behaved this last 18 months, I worry that perhaps the government is playing the longer game after allā¦.I hadnāt thought before, but when might be the next general election, three years, five years, never? This is all deeply worrying, as is everything that the Conservatives say and do.
September 8, 2021
Job destroying tax rises to “save the NHS” according to Dancing Queen (Gove.)
Hold on a minute !!! Weren’t businesses already shut down for two years to “save the NHS” ?
Didn’t we lose our liberties, not see our parents and have to wear muzzles to “save the NHS” ?
So now business (just as they begin to recover) are going to be choked off by taxing away people’s spending money to “save the NHS”and believe me, Ā£400 to Ā£800 a year is working people’s high street/out on the town spending money.
With a backlog of 5 million patients it’s clear lockdown didn’t “save the NHS” (the NHS never was at risk of not existing) and if this ‘religion’ were the C of E instead of the new C of UK we’d all be getting crucified to save Jesus Christ.
“Save the NHS” is the cover all slogan of UK communists to impose their will whilst accusing anyone who dares criticise it of being wicked.
Just how is Boris getting away with it ? It’s the cheeky chappy act.
September 8, 2021
Johnson gets away with it, Ginty, because he’s been using shedloads of our money to subsidise the press, since the Covid crisis began. He’s paying the piper, he calls the tune.
His government has no interest in high street businesses (reportedly closing at a rate of 50 a day), or in the people who might have had money to spend in them but now won’t, as you say.
September 8, 2021
No, he is getting away with it because most people realise that Social Care has to be paid for, and 1.25% isn’t going to kill anyone or destroy any jobs. Most people are more sensible than we give them credit for.
September 9, 2021
But the increased tax won’t pay for social care, it will disappear in the morass of NHS management to pay for superman suits, office decorations, platinum hellos and golden goodbyes.
September 8, 2021
Hypothecating the extra NIC charge works exactly as every other hypothecated tax: it is a fraudulent, barefaced lie hiding under a polysyllable whose meaning remains concealed from 99% of the population.
And capping the amount each individual has to pay regardless of his or her assets, and without regard to the real cost of services he or she will demand and receive, is stealing from the taxpayer.
This is all being done because the government is too scared to tell the Tory voters that the right to hang on to a property in which they no longer live and not count it as an asset was not inscribed in Magna Carta.
September 8, 2021
“I do not understand how hypothecating a small part of National Insurance revenue for the NHS and social care works.”
Testing the waters for the breaking of further manifesto commitments?
September 8, 2021
Can I, rather late in the day, pose a question: is ‘Health’ now so big that the social-care function shoud be removed from Javid’s department?
September 8, 2021
The NHS, a failed institution, should not be put in charge of social care. It cannot even provide a decent health service. Local authorities should run health care in people’s homes and have adequate funding from two sources:
– Create two new council tax bands, I and J, by splitting band H properties. The new council tax rates would be 2X and 4X the current band H rate.
– A charge of say Ā£20 per home visit, payable by the person receiving care or his/her family, using plastic.
Personally, I don’t see the need to cap an individual’s contribution to care in his/her own home. It’s much more important to cap the State’s contribution.
September 8, 2021
WHICH magazine:
The main ways to avoid paying full care home fees:
1 Local authority funding: The amount of local authority support you can get, if any, depends on where you live and your savings, assets and income. This will be worked out through a combination of a care needs assessment and a means test.
You will usually only be eligible for council funding if your savings and assets are below a set threshold ā this is Ā£23,350 in England, but itās higher in other parts of the UK. While it may be tempting to give away some of your savings or property to have a better chance of qualifying for free care, there are strict rules involved and you must avoid anything that could be classed as ādeliberate deprivation of assetsā.
2 NHS Continuing Healthcare: In certain circumstances, the NHS will cover the cost of a care home if you have complex health needs, but the rules are complex and itās not easy to qualify.
3 Staying in your own home for as long as possible: Depending on the level of care you need, there are various living arrangements and support services that could help you live at home for as long as possible.
—
The latest Government proposal will not protect from Accommodation cost in the Care Home – by far the biggest element of cost. As usual sleight of hand and statement.
September 8, 2021
The government confirmed to BBC News the daily living costs in a care home – those associated with food, energy bills and the accommodation – will not count towards the cap. The main costs in a Care Home are : Council Tax / Building/room maintenance / Feeding the residents / Electricity, Gas, Water services / Salaries & Wages / Profit (servicing debt?)
So clearly the Ā£86k cap covers miniscule parts of typical costs…
September 8, 2021
i think i might do that for these people
September 8, 2021
Only five Tory MPs voted against the Health and Social Care Levy, including Sir John. Will that be moving the schmilblick forward? Or is that hopeless/aimless posturing?
September 9, 2021
You should vote as you think fit.
What way would you have voted heffy?
Do tell us.
Imagine you were an MP of the government or the opposition.
September 8, 2021
Presumably the reasons are more skulduggery:
1. Pensioners pay it – if they put it on NI as-is they would either need to have pensioners pay it all or nothing. It establishes that pensioners can be made to pay these amounts in retirement, so expect them to inch it up later not that the thin end of the wedge is in place.
2. Despite removing the triple lock’s 8% this year, pensioners are now being hit with a 1.25% “levy” instead. That’s utterly digusting in vbiew of the afct that the UK State pension is the lowest of all developed economies. These two things are a double-whammy fopr epsnioners.
3. It makes possible another attack on dividends – this “levy” seems to apply thoughout income with no upper limit as there is with employees NI.
So yet another attack on the self-employed who have to use a Ltd Co. Disgusting abuse of power – when you’re the Chancellor and you family business is an IT consultancy which benefits by keeping such one-man band freelance people down.
It’s also sad that they still want to hit the house owner with a bill up to Ā£86k and let the renters off free.
And why make it NHS AND social care? Mixing the uses makes it very difficult to keep track of it and to unpick it later.
I cannot believe I’m seeing this from a supposedly Conservative government.
September 8, 2021
Pleased to see you voted in favour of economic good sense.
September 8, 2021
The past and imminent tax increases are depressing enough but they are compounded by the thought that the only direction that taxes will go under a Johnson government is up. Once upon a time Conservatives believed in small government, a tax system that would encourage people to work, save and invest, and the importance of the personal responsibility of the individual. With those beliefs abandoned what is left of the Conservative Party?
Well done for voting against the tax increase.
September 8, 2021
Th NHS has to be totally reformed with a drastic reduction in NON productive management of whom there are many. Bear in mind as soon as anyone mentions the NHS one has to think of VOTES so NOTHING happens.
Similar with local government, overloaded with management.
September 8, 2021
Sir John, thank you for voting against.. noted Steve Baker and David Davies did too amongst several others, sadly not enough.
Reply Thanks. Steve and David abstained. There were 5 of us who voted against.
September 9, 2021
reply to reply.
Well done. So the House has row upon row of sheep one side of the chamber.
September 8, 2021
Good for you John Redwood!
September 8, 2021
Sir John, well done for not voting for the measure. As money is “fungible” (= any sum of money can replace any other sum), hypothecating a small part of revenue is just a gimmick, because the larger part of revenue can be increased or decreased to match. You would have to hypothecate all spending for it to become meaningful. This is just “property heirs’ benefit”.
September 9, 2021
Well done for voting against this Bill.
The fact that only the costs of care are capped at Ā£86k but not the “hotel” aspect was carefully hidden until the last minute. I’d be interested to know when MPs became aware of this. Johnson has effectively hit those who have assets to pay for the care of the profligate/indolent.
I’m afraid I won’t be voting Conservative in future.