UK leader Boris Johnson gambles on tax hike to pay for cost of elder care

LONDON >> U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced Tuesday how he plans to keep a key election promise to grapple with the rocketing cost of long-term care for Britain’s growing older population. To do it, he broke another election vow: not to raise taxes.

Johnson told lawmakers in the House of Commons that his Conservative government had made the “difficult but responsible” decision to hike taxes in order to raise 36 billion pounds ($50 billion) over three years for social care and the overstretched National Health Service. The NHS faces a backlog of millions of delayed appointments and procedures after 18 months of pandemic pressures.

Johnson said there would be no more “dither and delay” about reforming social care.

“Governments have ducked this problem for decades,” he said.

That burden of funding care for older, sick and disabled adults in Britain currently falls largely on individuals, who often have to deplete their savings or sell their homes to pay for it. One in seven people ends up paying more than 100,000 pounds ($138,000), according to the government, which calls the cost of elder care “catastrophic and often unpredictable.”

Meanwhile, funding care for the poor who can’t afford it is placing a growing burden on overstretched local authorities.

Johnson announced a 1.25% increase in the National Insurance health payments made by working-age people and their employers, saying the move was “responsible, necessary and fair.”

But it breaks Johnson’s promise in the 2019 election campaign not to hike personal taxes. The increase, which takes effect in April, will cost someone paid 21,000 pounds ($27,500) a year about 180 pounds ($248) more on their annual tax bill. High-earners paid 67,000 pounds a year ($92,000) will pay more than triple that.

Taxes on income from stock dividends will also rise 1.25% to defuse claims that the burden is falling only on working people.

Breaking promises is hardly novel for politicians, but those enshrined in British parties’ election manifestos have long been considered binding on governments. Johnson’s plan has alarmed many Conservative lawmakers — both because it involves breaking a firm election commitment and because the burden would fall primarily on workers.

Jake Berry, one of a crop of Conservative lawmakers representing northern England who won seats from the Labour Party with promises of investment and new jobs, said the proposed plan would help affluent, older voters at the expense of younger, poorer ones.