Why the government's plan for funding social care is a lousy one

Insisting that people use their property wealth to pay for social care is perfectly reasonable, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

Rishi Sunak
Chancellor Rishi Sunak used to believe in people keeping more of their own money
(Image credit: © Paul Grover/Shutterstock)

“We promise not to raise the rates of income tax, National Insurance or VAT. We not only want to freeze taxes but to cut them too.” That’s the Conservative manifesto in 2019. “I want to see... over time... lower rates of tax because I just believe that its nice for people to be able to keep more of their own money.” That’s Rishi Sunak in 2020.

So here we are, a year later, with a tax burden that is about to be one of the highest ever. The new health and social care levy is a 1.25% tax on income. Add it to the others (National Insurance and income tax) and the entry-level rate of income tax in England will now be 33.25% (unless you are paying back a student loan, in which case it is 42.25% – and yes, that is shocking).

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.