Health and Social Care Levy Bill

Debate between Andrew Murrison and Lord Mackinlay of Richborough

2nd reading
Tuesday 14th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

In common with my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron), I am wondering—I think many of us are—why we are here today. We have a fiscal event, the autumn Budget, in just six weeks’ time, which would seem to be the right forum to discuss these matters. One cannot help but wonder: why the haste.

We had the Dilnot commission report in July 2011, 10 years ago. Arguably, even then, that was 10 years too late. It was intended to solve the inherent unfairness between two people who were on similar incomes throughout their lives, one who rented and one who bought their home, whereby one lost everything and one got everything for free. That is at the heart of these issues and of affordability in the longer term. I get that, and the Government have to be applauded for finally thinking about these things, but haste is not due at this time.

I am sad that we are just reaching for the tax lever. That is not what Conservatives do. We are going to end up with a tax take at the highest level of GDP for 70 years. Since we are raising NICs—particularly employer’s NICs—it stands to reason that any employer with a pot that they were thinking about using to increase general salaries across their workforce will reduce that pot by 1.25%.

Let us concentrate on NICs. On our first day back at school last Monday, we debated the National Insurance Contributions Bill, which exempts from NICs veterans and potentially new freeport businesses. We have employer’s NIC relief for the under-21s and for those under 25 on apprenticeships. We have an employment allowance to exempt employers from national insurance. That was at £3,000 for all small employers, and it has now increased to £4,000, because exempting employers from national insurance is deemed to be a good thing.

I say to those on the Treasury Bench: please help me. We tend to tax things that are deemed to be bad. We tax things such as alcohol, cigarettes and fuel because we want lower use of them. They are deemed to be bad. Increasing a tax on jobs, something we want a lot of, seems rather bizarre.

I serve on the Public Accounts Committee, and just last week we did an investigation into the Department for Work and Pensions. Last year alone, there was £8.3 billion of fraud and error in its payments out. Obviously, the pandemic had something to do with that, but there is an in-built annual loss of £5.5 billion through fraud and error. That is something approaching half of what we are looking for here to solve these problems.

As Conservatives, we grasp difficult problems. We grasp and understand the problem of an ageing demographic in our populations. On pensions, we did something novel. We could have just reached for the tax lever, but we did not. We introduced auto enrolment pensions, where the employer and the employee contribute and every employee in the land earning above a certain amount has a pot that they can call their own, with the flexibility that that has. To me, that is the type of thinking we should be doing now. I am very concerned that we will just sink another load of tax into the Department of Health and Social Care and hope for a different outcome, when we have been throwing money into these Departments for many years, yet our waiting lists are at the highest ever.

Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition have been howling, “Let’s have wealth taxes.” Well, I am very pleased to tell them that, yes, we have a very substantial wealth tax in play and it is called inheritance tax. It has doubled since 2011, from £2.7 billion to £5.4 billion today, and that will be going in one direction, given asset value inflations and the fiscal drag within the IHT system.

[Dr Murrison]

Of course, we have also had a wealth tax in the form of the removal of indexation allowance on capital gains tax for some years now, which is very substantial over time.

[Craig Mackinlay]

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for highlighting some of the fiscal drags that have been beneficial to the Treasury. In terms of asset price inflation, which has nothing to do with the activities of the taxpayer, other factors of low interest rates are involved. There are big windfalls coming towards the Treasury, in terms of IHT and capital taxes, which were never really forecast and are now bearing some substantial fruit. So I would have hoped that the Treasury Bench might have thought, “Where are those taxes going? Where are the other losses within the system across different Departments? Are there procurement gains? Are we really saying that the way the NHS is run today is the best way of running it?” I would have hoped that that could have formed the new pot to solve our social care problem.

I am very concerned that this is going to be wasted cash. I am very unimpressed and I will not be supporting the Government tonight.