Income Tax (Charge)

Joe Robertson Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)]

This is not a Budget for growth. On the Treasury’s own figures, growth will decline from 2% next year for the rest of the decade. On the OBR’s analysis, this Budget is inflationary. It is not on small businesses that the responsibility should land. Small businesses employ people. Small and medium-sized businesses drive the UK economy. If we tax them, we tax growth. If we tax their greatest assets—the people who work for them—then we take away employment opportunities for hard-working people.

I will talk more substantively about the dire impact of the Budget on health and social care, including health and social care providers that are not part of the NHS. The increase in employer’s national insurance contributions will cause great difficulty and hardship for GP practices; charities, including hospices; dentists; pharmacies, which are crucial providers of health services; and social care providers. Those organisations, charities and businesses thought that they might have a friend in a Labour Government, but I assure Government Members that they do not feel as though the Labour Government are a friend right now. I have been speaking to those in GP practices in my constituency on the Isle of Wight. One said:

“Our increase in tax from this Budget is the equivalent of the salary of a practice nurse. There will be no new practice nurse for us.”

[Graham Stuart]

Does my hon. Friend agree that no one would think less of the Government if they listened to these arguments, heard the message and changed? For instance, there is the message about social care being hit by £2.5 billion of extra costs. The £600 million that has been given to local authorities will not cover those costs. If the Government simply listened and changed, people would think much better of them, and we would have a social care system that supported the NHS, rather than one that stops the NHS being able to do what it needs to do.

[Joe Robertson]

I agree with my right hon. Friend. In fact, there has been one common theme running through this debate: GP practices, charities such as hospices, dentists, pharmacists and social care providers are all being taxed by this Government. At a time when they need Government most, these providers find increased pressure on their ability to employ and provide services to the British people. There would be no shame if the Labour Government were to do something about this gross problem with their own Budget.

Moving on to social care, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care said that there would be no more money for the NHS without reform, yet the Chancellor provides £22 billion for day-to-day spending unattached to reform. She and the Secretary of State are giving the equivalent of just 2.5%—£600 million—of that £22 billion for social care. That is a tiny fraction, yet the biggest reform that our NHS needs is fairer funding for social care. Money would be better spent on relieving the pressure on hospitals, and getting people out of hospital beds who do not need or want to be there, but who have nowhere safe to go to. Through this Budget, social care providers not only face the full burden of increased national insurance contributions, as employers, but receive a small fraction of the funding that the NHS receives. I urge the Government to go back to the drawing board and provide for our GPs, dentistry, pharmacies, hospices and social care.