Fight the Tory Tax on workers – Make the rich pay

Text of a Socialist Party Scotland leaflet

Boris Johnson’s announcement that national insurance will rise by 1.25% is yet another example of the bosses’ parties making working-class people pay the cost of a crisis not of their making.

Increasing national insurance contributions will hit working people in their pockets just as food and energy prices are going up, the Universal Credit uplift is being scrapped, and workers are facing attacks on their wages and conditions through ‘fire and rehire’ and other onslaughts from the bosses.

The increase in NI contributions would be significantly weighted against the youngest and lowest paid in the workforce, and many Tory MPs are fearful it would lead to an enormous working-class backlash against not only them, but their capitalist system.

While Labour’s Keir Starmer and Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP have spoken out against the rise, neither Labour nor the SNP/Green government will lead a struggle against this tax hike on the working class.

The SNP’s finance secretary is as pro-big business at the Tories. Kate Forbes believes that: “We want to create a pro-prosperity, pro-business and pro-jobs environment, which fosters entrepreneurship and makes Scotland an even more attractive place for investors.

They offer no alternative to workers and young people trying to fight a new round of capitalist austerity

For a worker earning £25k a year, a 1.25% increase in National Insurance would cost them £200 annually. For social care workers themselves it means a loss of around £100 a year, for someone on take home pat of £15,000.

The NI increase equates to a huge chunk of the recent pay rise for NHS workers. Many social care workers rely on the annual minimum wage uprating to get a pay increase.

Thousands more work for councils and are being offered a scandalous 2% pay rise by the Scottish employers – SNP, Labour and Tory councillors.

Social care and the NHS is in crisis and needs fixing. There’s no doubt about that. Almost 4,000 died from Covid in care homes in Scotland during the pandemic in an system where 75% of care is run by the private sector or so-called not-for-profit companies that put profit before safety.

Average pay for care workers is a paltry £8.50 an hour. One in four are on zero-hour contracts.

With that level of pay and condition it’s not surprising that there’s a shortage of 170,000 care workers. And the NHS needs much more funding.

In Scotland there are now 100,000 people on waiting lists for operations. Billions are needed just to deal with the current backlog.

Many times more than the the Tories and the SNP are promising! After everything they’ve been through in the past 18 months, health workers have been given a miserly 3% pay offer in England and Wales and 4% in Scotland.

Taking into account inflation that’s actually a pay cut! NHS workers would need a 15% pay rise just to take them back to the level of 2010 when the Tories started their austerity offensive.

This isn’t about young versus old. It’s about a system where the rich have got richer even during the pandemic and the rest of us are struggling.

There should be no place for private profiteers in our health and social care system.

Everyone should have access to free universal health and social care in an integrated system based on need not profit.

It should not be based on ability to pay. The top three owners of care homes in the UK are private equity companies, solely operating to accumulate profit.

Social care should not only be planned as part of a national set-up with the NHS but it should be nationalised.

The Tories have shown during the pandemic that the money can be found. Especially when it comes to giving contracts worth billions to their big business friends in the private sector.

They, the bosses and big business are the ones who should be coughing up to fund the NHS and social care, not low-paid workers.

The Trades Union Congress has calculated that if capital gains tax – the tax on profits from assets like stocks and property – was paid at the same level as income tax, that would alone generate £17 billion a year in the UK for funding health and social care.

But taxing the rich and big business should be just the start. They will do everything they can to avoid paying higher taxes that eat into their profits.

We need to be able to plan the funding of health, social care, education and other services based on need not profit.

That would be possible if the major companies and banks and financial institutions were publicly owned and democratically controlled by workers and service users.

The trade union movement, with the TUC meeting next week, should be calling for united opposition through action, to add to its words of opposition.

If the TUC fails to act, the left – particularly in Unite and Unison, the two largest health and care unions – should be meeting jointly to map a way forward.

We desperately need a new workers’ party to fight for socialist policies like taxing the rich and big business and seizing the wealth from the billionaires through public ownership of the economy.

That’s what Socialist Party Scotland is fighting for. Join us.