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08
Sept 2021
County council leader backs National Insurance hike to fund social care
The leader of North Yorkshire County Council has backed the government’s manifesto-breaking move to raise National Insurance to tackle NHS covid backlogs and reform the social care system.
Conservative Cllr Carl Les said the plan, which also includes capping care costs at £86,000, provided assurances that families won’t lose massive amounts of money due to relatives needing care and also showed the government was willing to tackle deep-rooted issues in the sectors.
However, some critics have said the plan, which would see National Insurance rise by 1.25%, does not go far enough. Social care leaders warned the money raised will be “too little, too late” as they struggle with staff shortages and surging demand for people needing care.
Cllr Les said:
Announcing the plan on Tuesday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the tax rise would raise £36 billion for the NHS and social care in the next three years, but accepted it broke a manifesto promise.
He described the plan as “reasonable and fair” and said the majority of the funds would go towards increasing hospital capacity to catch up on backlogs created by covid.
Some of the money – £5.4 billion over the next three years – will also go towards changes to the social care system.
But there has been anger from some care leaders who say more immediate support is needed to address the current crisis in the sector.
"Too little, too late"
Mike Padgham, chairman of the Independent Care Group, which represents independent care providers in North Yorkshire and York, said the plan failed to address the staffing situation and was a “huge opportunity missed for radical, once-in-a-generation reform of the social care system”.
He also said the amount promised “isn’t going to touch the crisis in the sector and will certainly not address the 120,000 vacancies in staffing, which is sending the sector into meltdown on a daily basis as care providers struggle to cover shifts.”
Mr Padgham said:
The new tax will begin as a rise in National Insurance from next April, paid by both employers and workers, and will then become a separate tax on earned income from 2023.
It will cost an extra £130 a year for someone earning £20,000, £505 more for someone on £50,000, and £1,130 extra for someone earning £100,000, the government said.
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Under the plans to fix social care, people will no longer pay more than £86,000 in care costs – not including food and accommodation – over their lifetime, from October 2023.
Once people have reached this cap, ongoing costs for personal care will be paid for by local councils.
£1,055 a week for Harrogate district care homes
In North Yorkshire, the Harrogate district is the most expensive area to get care for loved ones with the average weekly cost of residential care this year reaching £1,055 and the same figure for nursing climbing to £1,061.
Over a one-year period, this can equate to more than £55,000.
The government’s announcement to cap these costs comes at a time when the social care sector is in the midst of a staffing crisis and battling with a long backlog of people needing to be assessed for care.
Richard Webb, director of health and adult services at the county council, last month said the sector was facing “unrelenting” pressures and that it had reached “tipping point” with a 70 per cent drop in applications for the around 1,000 jobs currently vacant.
He said the NHS had also not escaped the staffing problems which existed before the pandemic but have only been exacerbated by the virus outbreak.
The staffing situation looks set to worsen when compulsory vaccines for care workers come into force on November 11.
From this date, it will become a legal requirement for all staff working in care homes to be fully vaccinated against covid – unless they are exempt – in order to protect the elderly and vulnerable residents most at risk from the virus.
In North Yorkshire, it has been estimated that around 500 workers could be forced out of their jobs because of this unless more staff come forward for their vaccines.
Announcing the tax hike on Tuesday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said:
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