What lies behind the Government’s £36 Billion Tax Raise to pay for care?

[Music] [Music] hello and uh welcome to this home edition of politics today and in this program today we'll be discussing the government's announcement to tackle the shortage in funding for the nhs but also providing social care and in this program today i'm joined by michael mccann the director of israel britain alliance also a former labour mp as well as donald boyd who's the leader of the scottish christian party um gentlemen welcome to the home edition of politics today i'll start off with with you michael as a former mp and i know that you've kind of worked on this issue um this seems like a very kind of complex issue the fact that the government has announced that uh the over three years they will increase the tax liability for us all to 36 billion 12 billion a year to pay for uh shortfalls in the funding of the nhs but also to tackle this big generational problem of providing long-term social care it's very complex it's it's not easy to get your head around and particularly the high rates of tax that will also go up next year um what are your thoughts on boris's announcement to tackle the nhs but also deal with this huge problem uh in terms of social funding and to providing long-term care my trustful assessment assignment is that boris johnson is using the pandemic as a method of bringing an issue which has been in the very very very long grass for an awful long time it's got massive financial implications as you've mentioned but even more deep-rooted than that it's it's based on essentially three issues the fact that we're living an awful lot longer than we have done in previous generations the fact that there's our health system and the ability to treat uh disease and to treat problems that individuals have is much much better than it has ever been and the fact that the whole family structure concept has changed over the last 50 years which means that we no longer have three generations for example grandma uh their children and then their grandchildren living in the same home so there's a as a complex issue you're right and you have to break down the component parts but ultimately um i think boris johnson is is choosing the time of the pandemic as a legitimate cover to address a really serious problem uh and donald um you know if we uh boris johnson has called this uh plan uh the build back better plan uh i think we've heard that somewhere before uh he's also said that as i said earlier that he will raise uh taxes to 12 billion pounds a year um but he's earmarked 5.4 billion uh for social care and currently there are 250 000 people across the country that are currently in residential care homes and of course the big problem is with the care homes and and older people going into care is that many of them have had to sell up their homes so they've worked their entire life to have a property they've got their property and then all that money has to be used for their care costs in later life so boris has announced that he wants to ring fence that as only each family will only pay or one individual only pay 86 000 so uh to protect inheritance to pass on to the next generation um do you think this can work there's three things you mentioned there that i picked up simon the first one was the buildback better as you say we have heard this before but not just in politics it actually comes from the big reset which is a thing that christians should be concerned about because it's actually got a global agenda not just here in the uk and we've had a matt hancock quoted it he attended these davos meetings uh and so we need to be aware beware of these slogans uh realizing that there's a much larger agenda a a not just local politics second thing about the taxis that you mentioned uh this is it's worth reminding people that money does not solve all the problems that we have and although we agree it is important it's not solving everything and from the christian point of view we would agree that we need a completely uh view of a or put it this way we need christian economy and that means christian principles being brought to bear upon the various issues and you know money is just one of the matters uh and it's worth remembering that jesus parables used money frequently to teach people one of the things we're needing is to teach people how to save money the government is good at stealing the money from people but we're also if why should people want to save for the future like that brings us into the third thing about selling their homes why save money for the future if at the end of the day is going to get stolen either through uh selling your home to pay for your care or by inheritance tax which is double taxation uh why why should people bother with that but nevertheless jesus taught people and he used parables about saving money rather frequently and we're needing christian principles uh people have heard about the gospel they don't realize that jesus himself spoke about two gospels there was the gospel of salvation that his personal salvation for each person through being born again through faith in jesus christ but he he actually began his ministry with preaching the gospel of the kingdom the good news that the kingdom of heaven is at hand and he taught his disciples to pray thy kingdom come and thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven the the gospel of the kingdom is christian principles being brought to bear upon earthly affairs here in this world and we don't hear very much about this even from christian politicians and we're needing to change the debate is so that these christian principles are brought in like salt into a seasoning once conversation is so that people can learn how well what are the principles that are at work here what you're going to have is you're going to have a political argument between the tories between labour and even the snp who want to get there although this is this the scotland england debate is a is part of the story but they want to get their bit in and so you're going to have a political debate over you know the minutiae a and by by all means have that that is good and proper and we've got ideas with regard to that but let's remember the overall context that the welfare of the country and we're talking about social care what do we mean by the word social and what do we mean by care anyway the welfare is much more than just being able to pay for going into a care home which might not have cared workers they've got people that are being paid paid very poorly and the pandemic has showed us the the value of these people but that doesn't seem to have been reflected in what's what's being discussed right now but mental health is one of the big issues but that's what christianity addresses and mental health is a in fact the cognitive behavioral therapy cbt for mental health there's not enough people practitioning it that was actually developed by a christian doctor and using christian principles and in the old days when people were listening uh to the christian gospel they were hearing things and and getting their thoughts and their attitudes uh directed according uh to a scripture and but when all that is gone you've got a teenager sitting in front of a mirror in the morning looking at the pimple that's growing on her cheek and she's got complete she doesn't have a consciousness uh she thinks that because her friends uh aren't she's her her what word am i looking for it'll come to me eh but you know they're not getting enough likes on facebook and they're not getting this and that in the next thing and so it's self-worth that's what i'm looking for their self-worth is going down and down and down because they can't get what they want this is the mental health and all these things are reflecting coming up from the bottom and working up through the whole of our society and christianity deals with these things yeah absolutely michael i just wanted to kind of bring you on board on this one i mean having from what i've read and i've read quite a few articles this morning on this um one big criticism of this is they fear that this will just uh be this extra 10 billion pounds to go into the nhs will just be absorbed by the nhs i mean there's an article here that i've read that the nhs want to employ uh 42 chief executives on a pay of 270 000 pounds a year that's 80 percent more than the prime minister so isn't that a great danger that in just pumping money into the nhs to solve some of these problems causes a bigger problem without that kind of uh waste that there is in the nhs and the reform that's needed uh and the salary cuts and and surely the nhs is just one massive great pit and it's called the national health service but we know that so many other foreign nationals use our nhs for free because their families are here they come over they use the nhs which is a fabulous service but you know it's costing us all too much isn't it well well simon look have you ever been in america have you ever had a problem in your health in america because i have and before i get the first piece of treatment i had to get my credit card to pay for it uh when i was in it was in san francisco in 2008 with international children's games when i was a counselor so therefore do we want a system where you get knocked down in the street and the first thing they do is reach for your wallet to find out if you've got enough money to pay for it of course we don't and in the uk we have become accustomed to the national health service the problem is is because it's a bmw it's a massive organization it's how you can control it and successive governments have attempted to bring in different measures in order to control the funding of the national health service and quite frankly in terms of the government's proposals here it's up to them to ensure that they put in the mechanisms in place so people don't um it's not micromanaging but they have to put in place an overall strategy for how the the additional finance that this national insurance increase will create will be put to best use but for me i listen to the debate in the house of commons yesterday and i turned it off because quite frankly i could have written everything else down that they were going to say because i've heard that so often rachel reeves who's a shadow chancellor i've worked with her closely uh hugely unimpressive because i listen to the labour party say this that the national insurance increase was attacks in workers yeah but the government should be doing more i mean can you get think of a bigger contradiction in terms but they're saying that the government shouldn't be attacked increasing national insurance to provide this money for social care or to help the nhs but it's not enough that means that they're saying they're going to tax somewhere else now there isn't anywhere else you can tax and there's no pain um you know the only time i think the national lottery was only it was called the tax on the willing uh but there's no other tax that is popular you don't like plain tax i don't like paying tax but we realize this is a necessary evil to get things done but it's up to the democratic institutions that we have to hold organizations like the nhst account because here's the fundamental problems that we have my grandfather my maternal grandfather died when he was 64 in 1976. i'm sure if we had someone dying today of 64 we would we would lament about how young that person was now my mother is 84. and i know many people who um i've got elderly parents in their 70s and 80s and 90s and there's going to be more people reaching 100 in the next generation than ever before in their lifetimes because of the advanced in drugs whereas in the 1950s 60s and 70s these drugs weren't available so people passed away and in addition because there was a larger family unit where uh you were looking after your grandparents and they were passing on as donald alluded to earlier their knowledge to their children and it became a much better family family unit as a result of the grandparent being there it was probably because that in the event of someone elderly back in the 60s or 70s or 50s or whatever having an illness the likelihood was they would go into terminal decline very very quickly so therefore they wouldn't be around for very much longer the difference is now because we've had so many advances in medical science then people must live much longer children don't want grandparents or parents in their home and they want to palm them off to the system now the system has been absolutely struggling under the weight of that because you know although again as donald rightly pointed out these people in the social services sector have been treated exceptionally badly in terms of the salaries they get for the difficult jobs that they do you know showing the empathetic skills that they've got to have as well as the practical skills the bottom line is these costs have been increasing and increasing and increasing and of course the care has not always matched the price tag so therefore one would hope and we'll see the details as it comes out the holistic approach is not just about putting more money into the system but making sure that money is properly spent at the proper end not by hiring 80 new chief executives but by by giving the people at the bottom a decent salary so they feel that that's a that's an industry that they can commit to for life and they don't just see it as a transient occupation which results in many of the abuses that we've seen over the past couple of decades absolutely uh uh and donald also i think we have to raise the issue of the taxes particularly on those who've been so badly affected uh during this this pandemic in terms of how much the national insurance hike will cost you uh this is uh 20 if you earn 20 000 pounds a year they reckon it's going to cost you 10 pounds 87 a month that's an extra 130 pounds a year if you earn 30k a year then that's uh 21 pounds 28 a month that'll cost you 255 pounds a year if you earn 40 000 that's 31 pounds 70 a month uh and so the figure then is three is 255 pounds a year with 40k it's 31 pounds 70 a month so that works out as 380 pounds a year for those earning a salary of 50k that's uh 42 pounds 12 pence a month uh resulting in 505 pounds and if you earn fortunate enough to weren't over 100 000 pounds a year then that's 94 pounds 20 a month paying an extra 1130 in national insurance contributions so the kind of the kind of big question here is particularly those that are on the kind of lowest salary that uh and taking a minimum wage particularly these care home workers they could end up paying an extra 1000 pounds in tax particularly with the people being hit so badly with the with the pandemic financially um is this the right time to bring in this social reform and and calling for the biggest tax rise in 70 years is this the right time to do it the last one is probably quite brief because the timing of course has been associated with the coronavirus pandemic and as you say never never lose the opportunity to make use of a crisis is so i mean this is what's happening if the tories have to put up top taxis they've got a very good reason for doing so they can blame the epidemic and that's what's happening the on the subject of taxation is just from it's worth reminding for your your viewers that you know you can raise taxation in various ways you know it's either personal taxation which and this is what the national insurance which includes of course the employer you can do it through vat uh you can what the other thing that's been mentioned is you're taxing the dividends from people who've got investments and then those corporation tax will also be involved in in in this that's one way of doing it the taxation the rebel tories have taken the view that and there's very few of them but they've taken the views to do it by and shoot an insurance scheme uh but they the argument against that is that that's just privatization by stealth and as we all know that abuse insurance schemes are frequently caught out for abuses of various kinds uh and then of course last but not least but thankfully nobody's actually mentioned in this whole debate that i can hear as a quantitative easing which has been the solution since 2008 when we had our financial crisis so these are different ways of trying to find money and the debate is what you've said there um simon is you've asked yourself the question is this going to hit people at the bottom and end because it's if you compare these numbers that you've given the the high earners are paying a less lesser percentage of their earnings on this tax well i think the answer to that one initially the initial answer to that is the tax free threshold that sorry it's tax-free threshold which was a scottish christian party policy uh way back in 2010 danny alexander uh in the uh who was a chief secretary treasury i mean the lib dems also pinched that policy and used it and so the tax free threshold went up and up and up uh and we're pleased to see that because that should be helping although people say well it helps everyone across the board but again on the same principle as you've just used it proportionately it doesn't help the rich compared to the poor so i think the tax the the tax-free threshold is is a good way forward and pushing that up and up and up and moving towards the scottish christian party attitude is that what we're wanting is people talk about a national minimum wage uh and such like things i think the thing that we're really wanting to aim for again fitting in with what michael was saying we're thinking of households and so we would like to have a minimum household income that people in a household have got enough money uh to live from day to day and from year to year without constant mental health anxiety that is created by poverty and so i think we should be thinking along those lines instead of just merely a national minimum wage which deals with people you've got to have a job in the first place so and then you've got your universal credit and i noticed that some commentators are saying that that's not a that's not a good going to help here either so i i we like to think in terms of households and a minimum household income however that is derived and that would also bring in the thought that that michael has mentioned with regard to the different generations i mean i can remember when i was much younger a a a a mother who was looking after both her own mother and her mother-in-law at home and she wasn't getting a penny for that in those days and so obviously people put them into a home because because of that so these people should have been rewarded in some way their their contributions to society should have been recognized and they if you think in terms of a household then you know the the people in that household the the grandparents could could help with the child care costs that are rocketing that people complain about uh can i project there because i think there's a really important point that donald's making deciding which course which is is that the point of donald's just made is crucial because i think it shouldn't just be a bit tax it should be about planning so for example if someone's got a home and they've got a large back garden and they want to put a granny flat in the back of it so the grannies in the back but it's close to the family and and can be looked after and so on and so forth i think there should be for example no fees on the planning application absolutely it means that there's a practical way that you can help people so there's there's many other aspects to this but you know the fundamental problem i hope donald would agree with this point it's a fundamental deceit i had an snp politician yesterday when i was coming to stand up and say despite the fact that they'll get a dividend from this national insurance site because they're part of the united kingdom saying well we increased taxes first that was what she said because when the scottish national party fiddled about with the tax levels and you know putting little tiny little changes here and there to demonstrate how different they are from the rest of the united kingdom there's a a level of deceit in the whole debate from labour who claim that it's a wrong tax but they don't tell you how they're going to raise the money to deal with social care or indeed the backlog in the national health service from the any from the scottish national party who don't care about the economy would like the uk economy to tank because then it'll give them a stronger argument for independence and then you get the conservatives who are using the the pandemic as donald trump ago donald is a cover for making this change i mean wouldn't it be really refreshing if we do some real basic honesty from a politician now i have said that but what i have regretted when i was a politician because you know something people want to hear their own truth they want to hear their own truth which is fixed with their own particular circumstances and you can't create a bespoke tax policy for every single individual you've got to create one that covers the whole of the population so therefore you know someone's got a better idea of how he tax people and people will say something like corporation tax but corporation tax would only force companies to look to move their operations elsewhere where they could be taxed less i mean the big guns like amazon and google and or company starbucks and all the rest of our proven how easy it is to move capital around the world so therefore we have you have to do it in a way which is sustainable i want to we'll use quite often this morning and ultimately all the questions you're going to ask quite rightly simon in terms of your role as inquisitor here is to make a point should we be doing this is it the right thing quite frankly yes it is the right thing it has to be managed to demonstrate to people that ultimately the sacrifice they made with the bigger investment into this service made a difference how did it make a difference because a people are getting better care and b and this is where they aren't tackling the issue that donald and i have just raised a few moments ago is that we look to make the rules surrounding the wider concept of family better so that from a christian perspective we can also look after our families in the way that we will we ought to do absolutely so we're down to last four minutes now i just want to quote something that uh from fraser nelson who writes in the spectator on the inversion of the welfare state here and this is he quotes uh boris he says this is boris saying this uh my job is to protect you uh your parents your grandparents from having to sell your home and pay for the cost of care he said in the election manifesto promised not to raise taxes uh but 25 percent of pensioners are now millionaires some three million people another three and a half million i actually have a a wealth of up to half a million pounds so that's one in eight voters um and he says that the tax care home insurance scheme no matter how much anyone will have to pay no more than 86 000. so effectively he's saying that this benefits boris and the conservative party because it keeps those that are very wealthy um they won't have to lose so much money but this actually then affects the young and the poor so it doesn't seem like this is a kind of very fair system and it doesn't encourage meritocracy either i know there's a huge problem we have to tackle but hurting the poorest people is not going to help us um bridge the gap between the wealth gaps particularly out of how much money people have made from property and it shouldn't be right that they uh work all their lives um invest in property make money from their property and then at the end of their lives have to give it all back in social care yeah the the it's worth remembering mike was mentioning a few extra taxis and the the other thing worth remembering is if inflation itself is a tax if you think about it two percent inflation multiplied by 50 over here say fairly eats into whatever capital you've got that also and because of the quantity of easing and the increasing of assets that's what's led to so many people being millionaires they haven't really done very much it's just set while their assets have gone up and up and and the value of the pound has gone down down so uh picking up on that the deceit aspect that that mike mentioned this is why we say it's not just christian politicians we want but this is why we if i'm allowed to say this this is why we have a and want a christian party because as mike has pointed out that you've got party whips and party managers uh threatening their their mps and msps is so that they won't get promotion and they want days they might not even get reselected if they don't stick to the party script and of course the party script is not in and of itself christian and if you're wanting christian policies and if you want people that really do can care for the poor and that really will vote for things that will help to lift up uh people from the bottom then you you need actually a party that actually articulates these principles oh sorry to talk to you there donald we've gone down to the last minute so i have to kind of conclude the program um but uh just to conclude uh michael within 20 seconds um what advice have you got for our viewers watching the program trying to make sense of this new government policy well it's to get past all the political fraud that's going on about one saying well it's not it's not the right policy but we'll put tax in a different way but it won't tell you where it is get past all that political political thought this is a big issue has to be tackled at least we're at the start of it being tackled we can then scrutinize it from there but let's hope we get to a much better place and we look after the generations that looked after us absolutely and i think that's a brilliant way to conclude the program uh so gentlemen thank you for joining on this home edition of politics today and i want to thank you for watching this program uh this is a an issue that affects all of us particularly if we have older parents or grandparents um and it's also a question of how we manage wealth in this country and how we look after our family uh do we take personal responsibility or do we uh allow the state to take more and more control and responsibility over our lives and over our loved ones so uh we need to pray into this situation we need to pray that the government would be effective and um they would have accountability in all of this and pray that they would have wisdom so i want to thank you for joining me for this home edition of politics today [Music] you

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Length: 28min 42sec (1722 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 17 2021