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Like a City boy who grinningly stuck his card behind the bar at 5pm only to retrieve it at closing time to find a grim four-figure drinks bill, London and the South-East look set to pay through the nose for their relatively higher wages compared to the rest of the country. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Tuesday this week that his government would introduce a ‘health and social care levy’ in 2022, sticking 1.25 percent on National Insurance. Which doesn’t sound like very much, until you realise that it equates to an additional £659 a year on average for a family living in London, more than twice as much as some other areas of the country.
Johnson’s motion got through parliament with a comfortable 70-plus majority, with Conservative MP grumblers abstaining rather than voting against it. The levy is intended to help the drained NHS and address the ongoing national crisis in social care. Labour leader Keir Starmer, though, was scathing in his criticism of the PM’s hastily revealed plan: ‘This is a government that underfunded the NHS for a decade before the pandemic, then wasted billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on dodgy contracts, vanity projects and giveaways to mates,’ he said, calling the levy ‘unfair taxes on working people’.
It could certainly feel quite unfair for Londoners, given that the annual hit for people in areas like Yorkshire and the north could be around the £300 per annum mark. Still, London, eh?
As a counterbalance, Londoners think their city is the most diverse in the world.
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