Discuss !!!!

A question about : Discuss !!!!

Letter in today's Daily Telegraph:

SIR – I’d be surprised if Labour’s health spokesmen are against the proposals I am putting to Labour’s National Policy Review on refinancing the NHS and social care. The objection you report them making is squared in the report.

As the gainers from social care will be overwhelmingly older people, it would, of course, be unfair if yet another burden was placed on non-grey voters. That’s why I propose that all pensioner income should be brought within the National Insurance contributory system so that pensioners, who will most benefit from social care being combined with the NHS, and from the NHS service itself, should pay their fair whack once their income is high enough.

On the financing crisis described by Mary Riddell (Comment, July 2), there is no alternative to my proposal, except to accept that within a Parliament the NHS we know will not exist – no happy prospect for voters looking to Labour to protect them.

Frank Field MP (Lab)
London SW1

Best answers:

• Don't disagree with paying NI, once income is high enough, but I suppose we still have to accept that those on Pension Credit (who quite often are better off than those who do not qualify, because of all the perks that go with it), would yet again pay nothing.
• I don't think you can now get IB and State Pension together.
  Certainly my husband's IB stopped when he got his State Pension at the start of this year.
  TBH, I didn't think you ever could, because IB is an income replacement for those too sick to work, it is not available to those past retirement age. Are you sure you don't mean DLA?
• National Insurance is just another tax anyway - it certainly doesn't cover the costs of the NHS and benefits - and there is logic in combining the two forms of tax.
  Currently, pensioners over retirement age pay income tax but not National Insurance. An easy way to combine the two without affecting pensioners' payments would be to increase tax-free thresholds by the cost of National Insurance.
  Mind you, since Gideon Osborne did away with the pensioners' threshold (and reduced the top rate of income tax), he's not to be trusted in any meddling affecting pensioners without scrutiny.
• I would be happy to pay 1 or 2% NI. Surely, if a pensioner has an income high enough to pay tax, then some contribution to the health service is to general benefit.
  However, the best way of financing the Health Service is for all tax payers to pay contributions at the same level on ALL their salaries!
  I was in that ludicrous position of not paying NI on the last thousand or so of my salary. Then the government introduced 1% on salary over Ј34,000 or thereabouts.
• I am still working as a 'pensioner' and am not contributing to NI and also deferring state pension which is more than benefical t me.
  I cannot understand if working beyond pension age why NI stops.