With the government announcing that NHS staff will receive a 3% pay rise this year at a cost of around £1.5 billion, questions are inevitably being raised over how the government plans to pay for it. Considering then-Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the previously planned 1% rise was “what we think is affordable”, there’s clearly some explaining to do…

This morning The Times claims it’s likely to come from a rise in national insurance that was initially intended to fund the elusive new social care plan (albeit dressed up as “a new health and social care tax”, rather than just a manifesto-busting national insurance hike). Yet when asked about this by host Kay Burley on Sky News today, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng kept mum:

“We’re going to pay for it through general taxation, as we pay for everything…I don’t see how we could increase national insurance, but you know, things have been very flexible over the last eighteen months. We’ve lived through an unprecedented time, we’ve spent a huge amount of money that we never thought was possible.”

It’s a running theme of this week for ministers to dodge these kind of questions…

“Under a conservative majority government, the rates of tax and the three biggest taxes – national insurance, income tax and VAT – will not rise and they can be absolutely certain of that” – so said Sajid Javid, then chancellor, during the 2019 election campaign. Imagine Guido’s surprise last night to see multiple papers reporting new plans to raise National Insurance by at least 1% to raise at least £7 billion for social care. A tax you stop paying at State Pension age…

Speculation that the idea of an extra 2-3p on tax for the over forties has been abandoned means, once again, young people will be clobbered to ensure that granny and grandad don’t have to sell their valuable assets to fund care in later life. The news comes shortly after it was pointed out oldies could be about to enjoy an 8% rise in their pensions thanks to the triple lock, though there’s still hope Rishi might see sense and prevent that from happening. Is No. 10 determined to see just how low the Tories’ share of the youth vote can go?

John Macdonald, the ASI’s head of government affairs, tells Guido the hike would be a betrayal of millions of Tory voters

“It is an unfair attack on younger, hard working Brits. Hiking taxes will prolong Covid economic suffering by destroying jobs and crushing businesses — which could ultimately mean less tax revenue for public services.

Throwing money at social care will do little to solve the fundamental, structural issues. We need more private sector investment and a new model of insurance, not throwing fuel on a dumpster fire.”

As Macdonald points out, the state has grown large enough over the last two years; “If anything, a Conservative Government should be trying to abolish national insurance to allow people to keep more of their earnings and speed up the post-Covid recovery”. Hopefully Boris will see sense and perform one of his increasingly frequent pirouetting u-turns…