BORIS JOHNSON UNVEILS NEW TAX TO TACKLE COVID AND SOCIAL-CARE CRISES

Tue 07 September 2021:

The British government unveiled a new tax on Tuesday to pay the National Health Service (NHS) and adult social care services in the wake of the COVID-19 epidemic, which has highlighted and aggravated many of the country’s chronic health and social care challenges.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in the House of Commons, the lower house of the British parliament, that the government will levy a 1.25 percent Health and Social Care Levy on earned income across the country, with dividend rates increasing by the same amount, effective next April.

Speaking to lawmakers in the House of Commons on Tuesday, Johnson said it would be “wrong for me to say that we can pay for this pandemic without taking the difficult but responsible decisions about how we finance it.”

“So today we are beginning the biggest catch-up programme in NHS history, tackling the COVID backlogs by increasing hospital capacity to 110 percent, and enabling 9 million more appointments, scans and operations,” Johnson told the lawmakers.

He said this will raise almost 36 billion pounds (about 49.7 billion U.S. dollars) over the next three years, with money from the levy going directly to health and social care across the whole country.

He said from October 2023 no-one starting care will pay more than 86,000 pounds (118,965 dollars) over their lifetime, and no-one with assets of less than 20,000 pounds (27,666 dollars) will have to make any contribution from their savings or housing wealth, up from 14,000 pounds (19,366 dollars) today.

He admitted no Conservative government wants to raise taxes and this breaks a manifesto commitment.

“But a global pandemic was in no-one’s manifesto,” he said, adding that people in this country understand that in their bones and they can see the enormous debts the government has taken.

Jeremy Hunt, a Conservative MP, hailed the government for “taking a tough and politically difficult” decision to give the NHS and social care desperately needed funding and that is also a big step forward in protecting families from catastrophic care costs.

“For a Conservative government, raising taxes is always a last resort. We know public services are not just about funding, but standards too. But no government that wants decent healthcare can ignore demographic reality, so today’s changes will command support despite general unpopularity of tax rises,” Hunt tweeted.

Meanwhile, Margaret Hodge, a Labour MP, criticized the prime minister for failing to truly explain how he will fix the broken social care system, calling his plan a sticking plaster and the funding behind it is one of the least progressive options.

“It’s unfair between generations, individuals, and those who derive income from assets or work,” Hodge wrote on Twitter.

The need to treat COVID patients has contributed to worsening wait times for non-COVID care in Britain.

According to government figures, nine out of ten people in England were waiting less than 25 weeks before the pandemic, but that number has since jumped to 44 weeks. In England, the number of NHS patients waiting for testing, surgery, and normal treatment has reached a new high of 5.5 million, with the figure rising to 13 million in the coming years.

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