UK Prime Minister Johnson To Hike Taxes To Pay For Social Care

Prime Minister Boris Johnson will address lawmakers on Tuesday on his plans to fix Britain’s social care system, with many in his own party furious that he wants to pay for it by hiking taxes in a clear breach of his election pledges.

Johnson is now trying to address Britain’s creaking social care system, whose costs are projected to double as the population ages over the next two decades.

For years, British politicians have been trying to find a way to pay for social care, though successive Labour and Conservative prime ministers have ducked the issue because they feared it would anger voters and their own parties.

Johnson wants to raise the National Insurance (NI) tax paid by around 25 million working people to subsidise care for pensioners, including wealthy retirees, according to British media.

The prime minister will chair a cabinet meeting on Tuesday morning and is afterwards expected to address parliament at around 1130 GMT. Johnson, his finance minister Rishi Sunak and health minister Sajid Javid will then hold a news conference.

“We must act now to ensure the health and care system has the long-term funding it needs to continue fighting COVID and start tackling the backlogs, and end the injustice of catastrophic costs for social care,” Johnson will tell parliament, according to extracts released by his office.

“My government will not duck the tough decisions needed to get NHS (National Health Service) patients the treatment they need and to fix our broken social care system.”

Like many other Western leaders, Johnson is facing demands to spend more on welfare even though government borrowing has ballooned to 14.2% of economic output – a level last seen at the end of World War Two.