NHS windfall must not be squandered

IT’S A GAMBLE. And a big one. Perhaps not as big as asking a 19-year-old substitute who’s only been on the field a few minutes to take a crucial life or death penalty in a football tournament final, but a big gamble all the same. Be in no doubt: using National Insurance to take taxes to the highest level since the Second World War is as toxic as dumping a teaspoonful of Novichok into a cup of tea – and easily has the potential of delivering the same death blow to Boris Johnson’s political career, not least as NI can be characterised as both a tax on workers and also one that disproportionately affects the lower paid.

To break one manifesto pledge can be regarded as misfortune. To break two on the same day looks beyond risky.

The Tories had promised there would be no tax increases, with Boris spelling out on my show just before the election: “Read my lips... there will no increase in National Insurance!” And they had guaranteed that retirees would have their state pensions increased each year by average earnings under the “triple lock”. Yet last week the Government opted to renege on both pledges.

In a bizarre way, the coronavirus pandemic can be seen to have aided them in this. Few would question the fact the NHS obviously needs more cash as it emerges from the biggest and most prolonged challenge it has had to face in its 73-year history, so justification comes quite readily.

Images of nurses and other NHS staff actually weeping, spring quickly back to the mind’s eye and it wasn’t that long ago we were clapping every Thursday night to show our appreciation.

Finding an extra 1.25 per cent for them suddenly seems the very least we should be doing.

Equally, the social care crisis has been a scandal awaiting a radical solution.

Thousands have had to sell their cherished family homes to fund soaring care costs and it’s only when you’re down to £23,250 that the state starts to help, with the level rising until you reach your last £14,250. And even after that, some are still asked to contribute. Again, lifting the level of tax each week for about the price of a coffee from Costa or Nero doesn’t seem too tough an ask.

Boris Johnson and his top team did however face searching questions about their £12billion tax grab the day after it was announced.

The Conservative credentials of the Government were called into question and it was even mooted that while many see Labour as the tax and spend party, the Tories had morphed into the spend and tax party.

In the first PMQS after the summer

‘Managers hired at massive salaries doesn’t bode well’

break Boris batted away Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s protests with ease, but while defending against an underpar Labour leader is a relatively easy matter, ensuring the public don’t turn on you for broken promises is far harder, so here’s how Boris and his team can do it.

First, he has to ensure the near criminal profligacy that has been synonymous with the NHS is drastically curtailed. Stories of the service paying £15 for a pack of surgical gloves that would cost £1.99 on the high street cannot be allowed to return.

Similarly, the tiers of managers need to be stripped back and gold-plated pensions and pay-offs reviewed.

Regrettably, headlines last week of “dozens of managers” being hired at salaries of £280,000 a year do not bode well. Teams of consultants being hired at vast sums of money must be a thing of the past and expensive stunts such as getting top TV chefs to rethink hospital menus be avoided.

History is littered with politicians who have failed to keep promises and gone on to pay a heavy price; George H Bush was rendered a one term President after failing to keep to his “read my lips” promise and Nick Clegg’s Lib Dems took a beating from which they’ve yet to recover after he U-turned over student tuition fees.

In politics, timing is everything and at a time when many of us can’t even see our local GP in person, this huge amount of cash being hurled towards the NHS seems questionable.

In the eyes of the electorate, the service may risk being judged by its excess rather than its efficiency.