The new Health & Social Care Levy announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been labelled a failure by the CEO of one of Greater Manchester’s biggest care providers.
Dr Mark Ward, CEO of Stockport-based Borough Care, a not-for-profit residential care provider, said that the levy will do nothing to resolve the long-standing inequalities in social care. The hike in national insurance will disproportionately penalise the working families, that make up much of the social care workforce while protecting the assets of the wealthy.
Although social care provides care and support for more people than the NHS and employs more carers, £5 of every £6 raised by the new tax will further fund the NHS, not the chronically underfunded social care sector.
The head of the care provider, which invests all its resources back into enriching residents’ lives, also said that the levy fails to offer any significant support for the care workers who have been left mentally and physically exhausted during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The levy that Boris has announced will plug much-needed gaps in the NHS and ensure that there is a sticking plaster to get through what could be another hard winter with COVID. Sadly, only a tiny proportion of this funding will ever be used for social care, and even less will impact those that need care or those that provide it.
“It is shocking that the extraordinary care workers, laundry staff, cooks and cleaners who have sacrificed so much in the past two years to protect our society’s most vulnerable, are all but ignored in this flimsy proposal. Despite years of clear and consistent warnings, there is no commitment from the Government to provide sufficient funding to Local Authorities to enable them to even pay the true cost of care, which will result in still greater unmet needs and ever more vulnerable people left to suffer in isolation.
This levy does nothing to fix the social care crisis; it does not even attempt to do so.”
