Woman who’s speaking out for furious workers

CLAIRE Hovey, a self-employed copywriter from Winchester, Hampshire, urged Chancellor Philip Hammond to ‘see sense and reconsider’ his controversial increase in National Insurance contributions.

Miss Hovey, 32, and boyfriend Chris Edwards, also 32, have been live-in carers for his mother, who has Parkinson’s, since May.

In a blog post addressed to Mr Hammond, she wrote: ‘I am both a carer and a company director and, to be clear, you are demanding that on top of the 20 per cent council tax I gladly pay to HMRC… my existing 9 per cent NI contributions, 7.5 per cent dividend tax (rising to 32.5 per cent if, God forbid, I do well) plus the costs of covering student loan repayments, a pension, holiday, sick pay and parental leave, I need to find a further 2 per cent to ‘level the playing field’ with employees, while you continue to allow the existence of zero-hours contracts, tax breaks and tax avoidance for major companies to keep Britain “attractive” amid the Brexit I voted against.

‘You are only ensuring that my business cannot grow, you are risking my livelihood and you are making it harder to provide for my own needs later in life.

‘And you do this while grossly underestimating the care crisis and failing to address the buckling NHS at all.’

She added: ‘We’re both 32 now but we’ve put off getting married and having children because the pressure of providing the level of care needed for advanced Parkinson’s plus staying in work is too much.

‘We juggled remote working between us but it’s really affected our health, so the last five months I reduced down to three days. Chris works crazy hours to pay for some care support ourselves.’