How Brown tried it before

IN 2002, Labour chancellor Gordon Brown said he was raising taxes specifically to boost funding for the NHS.

But the way he did it – and where the money ended up – differed from the Tory plans under discussion.

Rather than creating a dedicated NHS pot of cash, he put a penny on National Insurance, raising the rate paid from 10 per cent to 11 per cent for earnings of £4,615 to £30,420, and introduced a 1 per cent rate for any earnings above this.

Labour said this brought in £8.2billion extra a year, which was meant to secure the future of the NHS.

In reality, it went into the general NI pot, which also pays for other public services. So there is no way of tracking whether every pound raised by the 2002 NI increases helped the NHS.