The government is planning to raise the cost of National Insurance (NI) contributions to pay for reforms to social care while tackling the huge NHS backlog caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Hull Live reported that the discussion has caused a split between senior Cabinet ministers regarding how much NI should be raised, with some suggesting it could be as high as two per cent.
Any increase in taxation would be a breach of the 2019 Tory manifesto, with it containing a personal “guarantee” from Boris Johnson not to raise income tax, VAT or national insurance.
Critics argue an increase in NI would disproportionately affect younger and lower-income workers, while pensioners would not have to pay extra.
In 2019, The Times reported that one in five people aged 65 and over has a total household wealth of more than £1 million - and their cumulative wealth is £4.7 trillion.
Conservative MP Marcus Fysh said he was “alarmed at the apparent direction of travel” of the Government, warning against a “socialist approach to social care”.
“I do not believe it is Conservative to penalise individuals of working age and their employers with higher taxes on their employment when our manifesto promised not to,” he wrote in the Sunday Telegraph.
A source close to Health Secretary Sajid Javid this week strongly denied he had pushed for an increase to national insurance as high as two per cent.
However, they did not dispute that he had argued for a rise of more than 1 per cent, which Chancellor Rishi Sunak is said to have opposed.
The table below shows how many extra workers would pay now - and how much they would pay with a 1 per cent hike.
| Difference at 1 per centt |
