Petition calls on government to exempt all social care providers from employer NIC increase
The petition has now passed the 10,000 signature milestone, meaning the government will have to respond to it
A petition has been launched calling on the government to exempt all social care providers from the employer NIC increase announced in the Autumn Budget.
The petition, launched by Katrina Hall, has now passed 10,000 signatures at time of publication. More than 1000 people have signed it in the past hour. Now that it has crossed the 10,000 signature milestone, the government will have to respond to it. At 100,000 signatures, the petition will be considered for debate in Parliament.
Following the announcement of the employer NIC increase, Chancellor Rachel Reeves told parliament that, “We are asking business to contribute more and I know that there will be impacts of this measure felt beyond businesses … But in the circumstances that I have inherited, it is the right choice to make”.
But the £600m for social care announced in the Autumn Budget risks being swallowed up by wage and employer tax increases, leaving little to address spending pressures, sector leaders have warned.
“Hiking costs for care providers risks pushing some to the brink,” the Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey, said last month.
Meanwhile, an open letter from ICG Chair Mike Padgham, following the Budget, said: “The lack of understanding of the impact these cost increases will have on social care providers beggars belief and reveals a total lack of understanding over how social care works.
“The bulk of social care delivery, through homecare and residential and nursing care, is delivered by small to medium-sized businesses that are employee heavy.
“Huge increases in the costs those providers face – through the employer’s National Insurance rise and increases in the National Living and National Minimum wages, without an injection of funding to help them cope, is potentially disastrous.”
He said “the Government either had to make social care providers exempt from the National Insurance increase or ring-fence funding with local authorities, that commission the bulk of care, to pay for the rise”.
“The Government has to do something and it has to do it quickly, as I am already hearing from providers that this might be the last straw for some of them,” Padgham added.
“They have gone through 30 years of financial cutbacks and seen funding for social care fall whilst demand for more and more complex care services increases. They cannot take any more.”