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Boris Johnson PHOTO: Reuters
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Boris Johnson announced a new tax in the UKto pay for social sector reforms and national health care funding.
Johnson noted that in the next three years, this will raise 36 billion pounds for first-line services in public life.
However, the prime minister’s plan violates the Tories’ campaign promise not to raise taxes. BNR.
The prime minister’s plans call for an increase in national insurance contributions by 1.25% from April next year. This means that a person with an annual gross income of 30,000 pounds will have to pay an additional 255 pounds a year.
Money is needed to help with the long delay in hospital treatment, the prime minister said. Regarding criticism from his party members that the election manifesto was being violated, Boris Johnson said:
“Yes, I admit that this violates the election promise, which is not something I do lightly, but the global pandemic was not embedded in any manifesto.”
The leader of Labor’s largest opposition party, Kier Starmer, noted that national health problems were not limited to Covid-19 and that 2 million people were on the waiting list for treatment before the pandemic. He called Johnson’s plan “putting a patch on a growing wound” and said:
“We have to ask the rich to pay more. Careless fraudulent handling of dividends will not help. Instead, the government places the burden mainly on working people and businesses struggling to survive.
Scottish National Party parliamentary leader Ian Blackford reminded the prime minister that health issues are decided by the authorities of the self-governing parts of the United Kingdom, so it is good that Johnson “takes his hands off Scottish health care because no one trusts him.”
The director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Paul Johnson, commented that funding social welfare reform from increased social security is not the right way.
Political observers note that Boris Johnson knows he is taking a big risk with the plan, hoping voters will forgive him for breaking one promise to fulfill another.
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