Tomorrow we will be asked to vote on the remaining stages of the Health and Social Care Levy Bill. I can say with certainty that I will not be supporting the government once again, here are my reasons:
1) The idea that any government once it has given extra funding to the NHS will then redirect that is nonsense.
2) We are over promising. The demographic challenge is such that this tax rise will just be a drop in the fiscal ocean
3) By doing this we are forever going down the road that the answer to social care is found through big government and higher taxes. I believe there is a role for co-operatives, new style friendly societies and an insurance market which has economies of scale.
4) As they stand, the plans for an insurance market forget a fundamental point. You can’t decree that a market is created; government can only set the broad environment and this unfocused lurch to more state is not the way to create it.
5) I agree social care is a mess. I have 2 close relatives with dementia right now and they get very little help because they are self-funding until the money runs out. We’ve had literally dozens of calls and assessments and all we have access to is a once a week ‘dementia cafe’
So why not simply vote against? I actually believe that the NHS does need some extra resources to get over the pandemic backlog, but this shouldn’t be tied to and rushed through with social care policy.
One thing is for sure, Labour as they have shown do not have any answers whatsoever and this is why I won’t share their lobby either.
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