I join many Members who have already spoken in wholeheartedly supporting the Government in trying to grasp this nettle, which has been pushed into the long grass for too long by too many Governments of all persuasions. However, I think many of us are concerned about the haste with which this reform—or this funding, certainly—is being introduced. Parliament has little time to scrutinise the details properly, and there are so few details out there. Questions to the Prime Minister only last week, in a letter copied in to the Chancellor and indeed to the Secretary of State for Health, have been left unanswered.
I would ask those on the Front Bench what other types of funding for social care systems have been considered. Have they looked at the insurance-based systems on the continent? Why not a public insurance system, which has many merits? We are unclear about the exact improvements to social care, yet today we are signing off a massive tax increase—bigger than that raised by some Budgets.
I would also suggest that this is the wrong approach to the funding. The Conservative party has traditionally referred to national insurance as a tax on jobs. The Prime Minister, when opposing Labour’s increase from the Back Benches in 2002, called it regressive. He was right then, and I am afraid that he is wrong now in introducing this national insurance contribution tax increase.
The core of my one nation Conservatism is a belief that, in order better to help the more vulnerable and ensure that we maintain low unemployment, we should encourage economic prosperity. Low taxes help businesses, encourage prosperity and keep unemployment down—they certainly help to. Yet here we are, increasing taxes at a time when the recovery is still fragile after the pandemic. This will cost jobs, and it will result in lower pay and higher prices. I also to a certain extent question the fairness of this increase in our national insurance contributions, which will disproportionately fall on the lower paid. Why should wealthy non-working pensioners be exempt? If this were a truly broad-based tax, we would be answering that question, but there is nothing but silence from the Government on that point.
I am concerned about the lack of response from the NHS with all this extra funding going in and the lack of accountability. I was chair of the all-party group on cancer for 10 years. We continue to point out that we are failing to match international averages when it comes to our cancer survival rates. We have a mass of process targets that create myriad bureaucracies, but we are still not catching up when it comes to average cancer survival rates. Only half the NHS workforce is medically trained. We need to address that, because more money alone is not the answer. We need genuine reform that focuses on outcome measures, not process targets. So we need more time to consider the proposals and I will not be supporting the Government in the Lobbies tonight.
3.47 pm