Yesterday John was at Pembury Hospital where he had his life saved from throat cancer six years ago. He says’
‘Everyone’s worried about the NHS, but the Green Party has a plan. We intend to introduce a fairer tax system where the richest 1%, that’s just the billionaires and multi-millionaires, will pay their fair share, and it won’t affect you and me.
That will make for a better NHS and a fairer Britain, and also help people who may be losing hope.
So for Real Hope, and Real Change, on 4th July – Vote Green!’
To offer Real Hope and Real Change for the NHS, Greens would:
Invest £50 billion per year by 2030 into health and social care – more than any other major party – and would use the money to:
Dramatically reduce waiting lists;
Offer everyone access to an NHS dentist;
Guarantee urgent access to a GP and same day access for those in urgent need;
Invest £5bn per year to boost NHS salaries and keep our wonderful nurses and doctors in the UK;
Invest £20 billion per year into adult social care to ensure dignity for those in need of care and take pressure off the NHS;
Restore public health budgets with a £1.5bn uplift in spending
Invest £20bn in a capital investment to bring our crumbling hospitals and old equipment up to standard. We estimate that to meet these commitments, the NHS in England would require an additional annual expenditure of £30bn a year by 2030 while adult social would require an additional £20 billion per year.
How will we fund this? By Taxing Wealth Fairly
Our wealth tax will tax the wealth of individual taxpayers with assets above £10 million at 1% and assets above £1bn at 2% annually.
Our reform Capital Gains Tax will align the rates paid by taxpayers on income and taxable gains. This would affect less than 2% of all income-tax payers.
Align tax rates on investment income with the tax and NIC rates on employment income.
Remove the NI Upper Earnings Limit that restricts the amount of National Insurance paid by high earners. Tax rates should not fall as income increases.
Equate the rate of pension tax relief with the basic rate of income tax to help fund the social care that will allow elderly and disabled people on low incomes to live in dignity. We estimate that by the end of the next parliament these tax changes could add raise between £50 and £70bn pounds per year in 2024 prices.
Putting this investment into perspective
Under our plans, spending on the NHS would increase by 1% of GDP by 2030. Day-to-day spending on the English NHS is currently around £180bn per year, which is about 6.5% of UK GDP. If the budgets for the devolved administrations are included, this rises to 8% of GDP. By 2029/30 we expect day-to-day spending on the NHS across the UK to rise to 8.9% of GDP (from 8.0%) under current government plans, Our costings add £30 bn to English HNS budget in 2029/30. This would increase the revenue budget for that year by about 12%. Including the devolved administrations, our plans would increase revenue spending on health in 2029/30 to 9.9%, an increase of 1 percentage point.
Note: On devolved nations, the headline figures here are for England and our costed manifesto will include funding to cover the parallel increases in spending in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.