This week in parliament has been fever pitch from the start. A huge announcement on social care, a boundary review proposal for Wales and even talk of a Government reshuffle. Nothing gets the rumour mill into overdrive quite like the fate of colleagues!

My conservative instincts always err in favour of low taxes, so raising National Insurance has never been on the wish list - but then neither was Covid. The opportunity to play for yet more time to resolve the long-standing issue of social care has passed, as has the chance of resolving it via yet more borrowing. To deal with the NHS backlog, and to protect people into their old age, we need to act.
 
For Wales this will mean £700 million of extra funding, 15% more than will be raised from Wales’s own tax base - another Union dividend in fact.
 
Welsh Government is responsible for designing its own social care solution (using this money) though I sincerely hope it will follow the UK Government’s lead in making sure that those with assets under £20,000 will not pay anything for their care, and that for others there will be a means test and a lifetime cap of £86,000. 

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Did we say we wouldn’t raise taxes? Yes. 
But I hope readers will understand that the world has changed, and doing nothing - or just adding to the national debt - is a not viable option either.
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Simon

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