Gordon Brown Goes On Charm Offensive Over NHS Tax Increases

by Jason Gorringe, Tax-News.com, London

15 March 2002

UK Chancellor Gordon Brown on Wednesday launched a media charm offensive to put the case for potential tax increases to fund the National Health Service.

Speaking on GMTV, BBC Breakfast, and the Radio 4 Today programme, the Chancellor stated that increasing tax may be the only way to rescue the failing NHS, although he promised that the Government would abide by its promises not to increase direct taxation or extend VAT to food.

'Nobody wants tax rises, but there has got to be a debate in this country,' he explained to GMTV, adding that greater expenditure on the health service is clearly necessary if Britain is to attain a standard of health care which is 'the pride of the world'. He continued:

'I want all the parties, I want the whole of the country, to see the figures, to see what the position is and then we make our choice.' However, as the Government, with the help of studies such as the Wanless Report, has effectively ruled out direct tax increases, VAT increases, and private healthcare plans as solutions to the NHS problem, the choice would seem to be limited to increasing national insurance contributions.

Mr Brown's media campaign, designed to put the case for his pre-Budget report, was condemned by both the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats. Shadow Chancellor, Michael Howard, observed that without fundamental reform of the structure of healthcare in the UK: 'more money will not deliver the results which the people of this country are entitled to expect.'

Matthew Taylor, the Treasury Spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, condemned the Chancellor's statements as 'complacent', arguing that: 'In the face of British manufacturing collapse, the NHS in crisis and pensioners in poverty, we get tax fiddles and spin on spending figures.'

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