Will the NHS ever give up the national insurance levy?

This week’s rise in National Insurance has caused the government enough trouble, but it faces potentially an even bigger problem next year – when it tries to prise the extra £12 billion raised in NI away from the NHS and use it to fund social care instead. The extra revenue from NI has been earmarked for the next 12 months for the NHS, to help it catch up with a backlog in routine treatments following the Covid-19 pandemic. But from April 2023 the intention is to rebrand the NI rise as the ‘Health and Social Care Levy’ – and to spend it instead on funding social care.

The trouble is, just how does a government take money away from the voracious financial beast that is the NHS? The government’s plans for NI rest on the premise that a one-off injection of cash could help clear the backlog of treatments within 12 months.