Health and Social Care Levy (Repeal) Bill

Kim Johnson Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 11th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

I welcome this decision to repeal the regressive hikes to national insurance, which would have seen those least able to pay with the heaviest proportional tax burden to tackle the crisis in social care. This is the right thing to do, but it should never have happened in the first place. Tax rises on the poorest, especially during a cost of living crisis, are cruel and unnecessary.

We now need urgent reassurances from the Minister that new funding for adult social care will come from progressive taxation and the pockets of those who can most afford it. We must be clear that a U-turn is not a plan; it is the absence of one. We still have no answers from the Government about how they plan to tackle the crisis in adult social care or where the funding will come from, other than to wait until 31 October for the medium-term fiscal plan.

Twelve years of Tory austerity have already seen £8 billion taken out of the social care system. Now we are facing a winter of hardship driven by the rampant cost of living crisis. Instead of bringing forward measures that will help the poorest and those most in need, the Government are prioritising tax cuts for the rich and public service cuts for the rest of us. They have removed the triple-lock protections on pensions and are refusing to commit to raising benefits in line with inflation. They have made disastrous economic decisions that have crashed the economy and made the cost of living crisis one of the worst among comparable countries.

Local governments are being forced to make further crippling cuts, as well as find extra money for energy costs and inflation to maintain their public services. We know that adult social care provision will suffer. Liverpool has lost £465 million of our budget since the start of austerity, which is more than two thirds of our overall budget since 2010. Liverpool, like other cities, has a growing elderly population with increasing complex needs, including dementia.

We urgently need a big injection of funding to councils’ care budgets alongside a social care workforce strategy to meet rising demands. We are facing unprecedented staff shortages in the health and social care sectors, with more than 165,000 vacancies and a massive staff turnover of 30% a year. In Liverpool, 15% of our social care workers are employed on zero-hours contracts and we have a vacancy rate of over 10%. Without action, the consequences will be devastating. We must be absolutely clear: a shortage of staff costs lives. It is as simple as that.

We are about to face a second round of Tory austerity, with £43 billion to be slashed from public services that have already been decimated during 12 years of Tory Government. Instead of more cuts, we need a serious injection of cash into adult social care and a plan to bring those services back in-house to end the rampant profiteering of companies backed by private equity funds, which sucks public money out of the system and out of services and straight into tax havens in the Cayman Islands to be hoarded by the super-rich. Decent pay, terms and conditions for undervalued employees must take centre stage of any serious plans to tackle the deep-rooted structural issues in the social care sector along with a long-term workforce strategy and improved quality and standards of care.

The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has committed to maintaining the same levels of funding on health and social care despite today’s cancellation of the levy. However, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor are crowing about this reversal to national insurance contributions as a key victory in their tax-cutting agenda, which will see £43 billion slashed from public services. Will the Minister confirm whether the Government will commit to spending the same planned £12.4 billion a year over the next three years that would have been raised by this levy? A simple yes or no answer would be great, thank you.