May faces calls for tax to fund the NHS
Cross-party letter warns Prime Minister that if she doesn’t set up NHS select committee, they will do
Theresa May is being urged to consider an NHS tax as nearly 100 MPS called for a parliamentary commission on health and social care. Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, said that a ring-fenced tax would have the support of the public. Ninety-eight MPS, including several former ministers, have written to the Prime Minister saying they are “seriously worried” that the Government is not doing enough to address social care and warning that patients will suffer.
THERESA MAY is under mounting pressure to bring in an NHS tax as nearly 100 MPS from all parties urged her to agree to a parliamentary commission on health and social care.
Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, said yesterday that a ring-fenced tax would have the support of the public, in a clear indication that the approach has his backing.
Ninety-eight MPS, including the chairmen of 21 select committees and 30 former ministers, have written to the Prime Minister urging her to break the “political deadlock”.
In the letter, they say that they are “seriously worried” that the Government is not doing enough to address social care issues and warn that patients and their families will suffer as a result. They call on the Government to set up a special select committee of both houses of Parliament to reach a cross-party consensus on funding for the NHS and social care, including assessing an NHS tax.
They will directly confront the Prime Minister over the issue when she appears before the liaison committee of select committee heads tomorrow.
In the letter they say: “A growing number of us, from across the Commons and more importantly the wider public, want to see a break in the political deadlock that has prevented a realistic approach to increasing resources both to address the current situation and take a long-term view of future funding. Whilst we will never entirely depoliticise health and care, without a degree of consensus in arriving at difficult decisions about raising revenue, it is patients and families who suffer.”
The 33 Tory signatories to the letter include Sarah Wollaston, chairman of the health committee; Nicky Morgan, the former education secretary; and Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the foreign affairs committee.
Prominent signatories among the 48 Labour MPS include Hilary Benn, chairman of the Brexit select committee; Rachel Reeves, chairman of the business committee; and Harriet Harman, the party’s former deputy leader.
Sir Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat leader, and Norman Lamb, the Lib Dem former health minister, have also signed the letter.
The MPS say that their constituents “cannot afford another policy failure on social care or health and this would also have serious political ramifications”. They warn that if the Government fails to set up a parliamentary commission, MPS may set up a “super” select committee themselves.
It comes amid suggestions that the
‘Their real concern is this rather crazy way we have been funding the NHS over the last 20 years’
Prime Minister will mark the 70th birthday of the NHS later this year by giving it a £4billion-a-year boost. This follows months of lobbying by Mr Hunt and Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, who has called for a “Brexit dividend” to be spent on the NHS.
Mr Hunt yesterday said that he believes taxes would have to rise to pay for a boost in NHS spending. Appearing on Peston on Sunday on ITV, he said that it was time to end the “feast or famine” approach to NHS funding.
He called for funding to be set over 10-year cycles, adding: “There’s no doubt that NHS staff right now are working unbelievably hard and they need to have some hope for the future.
“But I think their real concern is this rather crazy way we have been funding the NHS over the last 20 years, which has really been feast or famine.”
The idea of a special, separate tax for the National Health Service is gaining ground. A cross-party group calls this morning for a parliamentary commission on such a policy. These special taxes, known as “hypothecated”, have lots of problems. The fundamental one is the belief that it would be good to take the issue “out of politics”.
The basis of democratic politics is an argument about taxation – a lesson we should have learnt from the American War of Independence. If you are to have taxation, you must have representation, so that the people’s representatives can settle who should pay and how much. Without this, the people are robbed. The NHS is the second-largest item of spending (pensions being the largest) for which our taxes are collected. A special tax that tried to remove such a subject from political debate would be a subversion of democracy.
We can see this from two current versions of hypothecation that we already have in this country. The first are the international laws/treaties which dictate how much we must pay for overseas aid or to impede climate change. This means that the amounts we pay to both must rise each year, regardless of the wishes of the voters.
The second is the television licence fee, which pays for the BBC. This is a highly regressive tax, since it charges the same to the poor as to the rich. It also protects the BBC from the rigours of public spending control – in other words, from the decisions politicians have to make in the light of voters’ needs and preferences. Neither of these examples is encouraging.
I write the above as a nonadmirer of the NHS as a system, although obviously I admire a great many people who work in it. If it is so great, why does almost no other rich and free country choose this over-centralised, bureaucratic, producer-dominated model of universal healthcare?
But even fans of the health service ought to ask themselves whether a special tax would really help their cause. At present, whenever the NHS “runs out of money” (usually due to maladministration, or because of an easily foreseeable trend, such as an ageing population, for which a better-organised service would plan), the Government stumps up. Terrified of losing by-elections and being branded “uncaring”, it “finds” – I apologise for all these quote-marks, but we are in a world where the terms used are unreal – another £4 billion or whatever of our money to shut the critics up until the next time.
If the NHS stood apart from all other forms of government spending, any such emergency cash would have to stop: what would be the point of a special tax, after all, if it could not do its own work? The result would then be that the public would look harder than at present at what the NHS actually costs and what proportion is swallowed by wages and administration, rather than patient services. They might come to resent, more than they do now, the lack of relation between spending rises and better healthcare.
People tell polls they want to pay more tax for a better health service. Possibly they do, but it would be unwise to test their loyalty too far. If they were faced with a health hypothecation tax bill every year, they might then ask the question – which should have been asked way back in the Forties, when the NHS began – “Isn’t there a better way of doing this?”
“A year to go this week to Brexit.” Yes, but… It would be more accurate – in fact, if not in law – to say that there are 33 months before we leave the European Union. This is because the 21-month “transition” period that follows our formal departure in a year’s time continues our membership in all but name. Indeed, it continues our membership on worse terms than before, because we lose all voting rights. For those 21 months, we truly do become a vassal state, paying taxes and living under laws that we cannot affect. It is the opposite of “remission for good conduct” in prison sentences.
Seen this way, the transition period is the biggest loss of sovereignty we have ever experienced. That is the context against which the trade deal in October for which Mrs May is fighting will need to be judged.
A friend sends me the form he is currently filling in for the renewal of his shotgun licence. The whole of page 11 is made detachable so that the “equality information” can be separately collated.
These “diversity” audits are now spreading right across public services and into businesses as well. In the case of shotguns, I am absolutely certain that the equality information derived will be most unsatisfactory to the authorities. They will discover that most British shotgun owners are male, white, aged over 30 and do not live in deprived inner cities.
They may wish to inquire what “glass ceiling” or institutional racism/ sexism is holding down young blacks in Brixton, Muslims in Bradford, or #Metoo activists who might otherwise hold as many shotguns as West Country farmers.
Goodness, this row about who will make the new British passport is stupid. What matters is what the passport is, not who puts it together. Our newspapers are printed on paper made from wood sourced from places like Canada and Finland. Does that make them un-british?