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The push by Andy Burnham to reform how we pay for social care for elderly people moves on almost every day. The latest twist is the warning yesterday that there will be “difficult, difficult decisions” on taxation.
So, it looks like there will be higher taxes. But he is very well aware that many people already feel they are getting bad value from the state, and that there is a danger that any additional tax will just go to pay the great mass of public spending, rather than being allocated to the specific service that it is supposed to fund.
The Government’s recent tax increases will have reinforced this view. Rachel Reeves’s increase in employers’ national insurance (NI) contributions in her first budget was not specifically allocated towards benefits and pensions, the stated purpose of the scheme. It went to “fix the foundations of the economy”, restore economic stability, and help fill a £22bn black hole of unfunded spending that she had inherited.
The only way to make sure that any new tax really would go towards social care for the old would be to ring-fence it so that any new government was legally unable to touch it. But even if that were credible, it would raise two other problems.
