Two-thirds support raising National Insurance to pay for social care reform, poll finds

Two-thirds of Britons support increasing National Insurance contributions in order to pay for a long-delayed reform of social care in the UK, according to a new poll.

Research by Ipsos Mori found that 64 per cent of those polled said they would support a 1 per cent increase in National Insurance contributions to help pay for such reforms, while 65 per cent said they would support the same rise to reduce the NHS backlog caused by the pandemic.

Support for these proposals was broadly similar for Conservative and Labour voters at the last general election - although young people were less supportive, with just 56 per cent of 18- to 34-year-olds in favour of the idea.

The polling company’s latest Political Monitor also found that 49 per cent of Britons want the government to increase spending on public services, even if that means higher taxes or more borrowing.

The results came from interviews by Ipsos Mori with a representative sample of 1,113 adults aged 18 and over across the UK.

Ministers floated the idea of increasing National Insurance to pay for social care earlier this year, but details were not put forward before MPs left Westminster for the summer recess.

The Conservatives also pledged in their manifesto for the 2019 general election not to raise taxes to pay for public spending, potentially making an increase in National Insurance politically difficult.

“Even though it might have been dampened by the pandemic, there is still some appetite amongst Britons for more spending on public services,” Gideon Skinner, head of politics at Ipsos Mori, said in a statement on the poll.

“In particular, they can be persuaded to support tax rises that will be used to pay for improvements to public services, as Gordon Brown found in 2002 and as we may find again with proposals to raise National Insurance to pay for social care reform or to clear the NHS backlog.”

He added: “Even past Conservative supporters are in favour of these, although young people are slightly less supportive of the rise than older groups (unlike taxes to pay for net zero).”

Ipsos Mori’s research also found that support for increased public spending had decreased from 66 per cent at the end of 2018 and 56 per cent just before the 2019 election to 49 per cent today.

However, there is a partisan divide, as 74 per cent of 2019 Labour voters want more spending, compared with only 40 per cent of 2019 Conservative supporters.

Meanwhile, some 60 per cent of Britons said they were in favour of paying higher taxes to help the UK become a net zero economy by reducing carbon emissions, according to Ipsos Mori’s research.

Additional reporting by PA