Boris’ tax hikes are wrong - but not for the reasons you might think | Sam Hall
Before the UK can fix its social and healthcare problems, it needs to fix its personnel problem in the long-term. We don’t need more tax that will be swallowed by the bureaucratic machine of ‘Diversity Managers’ and overpaid NHS managers, long before it reaches the hard-working front-line staff- nor can we consider nationalising social care without the people to fund it- the long-term investment to make the system fair and sustainable now we're all living longer, healthier lives.
Despite spending the austerity years banging the drum of low tax, we are to pay more towards social care - an additional £130 for someone earning £20,000 per annum. Whilst some Conservatives protested loudly that the free market, whose latest scheme to push us cannabis so we can further numb the pain of living in modern society, can do no wrong, and Labour protested that this was just a ‘sticking plaster’, all protests fell on deaf ears as the government packed out the ‘aye’ lobby.
Personally, I am not a high tax or a low tax Tory; I just want taxes to be raised for reasonable things and spent responsibly and effectively, bearing in mind that no government has any money of its own. I’m not even especially bothered that this broke a manifesto promise to not raise taxes- the same people who want a government that is flexible will be the first to protest when the government deviates from the path it set itself without the benefit of a crystal ball.
However, it’s his reasoning behind the raise that I find most troublesome. The Prime Minister said that ‘You can't fix the NHS without fixing social care. You can't fix social care without removing the fear of losing everything to pay for social care, and you can't fix health and social care without long-term reform.’ But the Prime Minister hasn’t fixed social care because he hasn’t given the system a chance of long-term reform. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer is right to call this a ‘sticking plaster’, even if potential socialist solutions like nationalising the social care sector present their own problems.
How did we get here? To the point where elderly residents have to sell their houses to be able to afford the cost of their care, to the point where their children have to consider re-mortgaging their homes to pay for their parent’s care?
Firstly, more people are living enough to develop conditions that require social care. In 2011 life expectancy at birth was almost double what it was compared to 1841, according to the Office for National Statistics. Our water is cleaner, our jobs safer, and our medicine more effective to name just a few factors. This means that conditions that would have killed the Victorians like pneumonia have become perfectly treatable- even within the last few decades AIDS, which one was a death sentence has become an extremely manageable condition. This means that although some Victorians would have lived long enough to develop conditions that require social care like Alzheimer’s, the numbers would have been quite small and they would probably have been cared for at home, with multi-generational families living under the one roof being much more common compared to today.
Secondly, we are already facing a looming demographic problem with about 30% of the population expected to be over the age 65 by 2066, translating into 1.6 million people with dementia by 2040 alone. This matters because more older people will naturally need more services like the NHS as well as social care. This is an ‘aging population’ which naturally means that there will naturally be fewer and fewer people of working age over time as the numbers of children growing up to become the taxpayers to fund all this and generate the government’s wealth will reduce, as our current workers reach retirement age to join a rapidly expanding demographic. Logically therefore, the substantial and ongoing contributions needed to make the system work will not be possible without higher taxes from an increasingly smaller pool of working aged people and/or an increasingly older retirement age. The Prime Minister has put two and two together, and rather than alienating his core, elderly vote, he has instead decided to slap a tax on people like me- just entering the workforce, aspirational, and steadily accepting the reality of retirement at about seventy-five.
No doubt the Leader of the Opposition labelled this a ‘sticking plaster’ because he’s envisaging a sort of NSCS - a national social care service with no upfront costs. Currently social care is means tested, with slightly different systems in place for the different UK nations. To be eligible for support from your local authority in England for example, you must have a very high level of need and savings and assets of less than £23,250. However, I fear that not unlike the NHS, a NSCS would strangle the real zeal, vision, and hard work of the front-line workers. Let me explain, about half of the £12 billion this new tax will raise has been earmarked for the NHS, but I question how much of this will reach those who are sick and in need. After all, this is an organisation, built on the sweat and tears of excellent healthcare professionals, that is steadily gaining a reputation for being a financial black hole. One such example is the phenomenon of ‘Diversity Managers’ which are apparently worth two nurses, this in an organisation that is disproportionately BAME, with approximately 1 in 5 staff being non-white. Not to mention the recent hiring spree of senior management, who attract salaries of £270,000 per year- it would be cheaper to buy them a new Range Rover a year, throw them a fuel card, and make them live for the most part on a nurse’s salary! Improving social care via a similar system will inevitably see taxpayer cash funneled straight into the pockets of management before a comparative trickle reaches those who need it. I very much doubt this is the answer.
Not least because this is in fact a personnel problem, or rather lack of them. As recently as 2019, the UK recorded the lowest number of live births since 2004, the very people that we need to pay the taxes to support the system that looks after their parents and grandparents. Ideally, if we think of older people at the top, working aged people in the middle, and children at the bottom, you want lots of working people supporting the needs of older and younger people, and right now our population is becoming top heavy. This partially explains the situation we are facing today. Many lament the hard work that children can be and whilst it’s true they don’t come ready made with a handy instruction manual, they are the investment our society needs or else I fear that will be only the start of the higher taxes my generation faces, combined with higher retirement age. Before we can even start talking seriously about a kind of NSCS, we need to sustainably fund the NHS, cut the inflated salaries and the woke positions. Faced with the prospects of higher taxes and/or a longer working life, I choose more taxpayers.
The Prime Minister is essentially kicking the can down the road. The UK badly needs more children to make the system more sustainable - earlier marriages that are committed and stable, where one wage can provide all the essentials a family needs. A housing market that prioritises families rather than single people and of course putting an end to the abortion pandemic which has claimed almost 10 million lives in 52 years. As Pope St. John Paul II so eloquently summarised in 1996 “A Nation that kills its own children has no future.” Whether by war, neglect, or abortion. It’s a reality that countries like ours are fast realising, with these tax increases only the beginning. China has realised it with its recent shift to promoting three children, we need to before it’s too late.
What’s most frustrating about this entire situation is that this week the Tories will be banging the drum for those that need social care, the elderly and vulnerable in society, and by the end of the month will be bringing the legal euthanasia drum out again so they can wash its hands of those very same people.
There is already a potential 250,000 small firms and businesses that are set to close this year under combined pressure from the Covid pandemic. It is accepted that having a vaccine doesn't mean people are immune or can’t pass on the virus. So, making Covid-19 passports mandatory is probably the wrong focus. For example, there could be more regular and accurate testing. There is just too much risk and too much to lose in implementing mandatory s and then realise somewhere down the line that it was the wrong thing to do.
In a society where children are seen as a personal choice rather than what society desperately needs to make itself sustainable, and keen to protect his core voters, it’s understandable that the Prime Minister is failing to grasp how inadequate and blunt-fisted his tax rises are. Decades of complicity about birth-rates in the UK and more broadly in the West are now steadily coming back to haunt us. Taxpayers cannot look after the vulnerable when they themselves need that care, who pays for their care? It’s not more taxes we need, it’s children. China gets it, does Boris?
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