What the NHS pay rise says about Boris Johnson’s priorities

Well, that didn’t take long. Two days ago, a leaked report revealed that the government was considering using a national insurance tax hike to pay for the NHS backlog and social care. Now it looks as though the money could be diverted elsewhere. 

The anticipated increase of at least one per cent on national insurance would transfer an additional £6bn from taxpayers to the Treasury. But today, the Times reports that £1.5bn of that sum may not go to hip replacements or speeding up the timeline for cancer patients to access treatment. Instead it could help fund the three per cent NHS pay raise, which has been promised by health secretary Sajid Javid.

Once again, this shows why hypothecated taxes – taxes introduced to fund a specific area of policy – so rarely work. In spite of the way in which such tax rises are presented, in reality the money isn’t cordoned off.