THE Government must act quickly to axe the National Insurance increase for social care providers or risk a serious increase in the number of people going without the support they need, campaigners have warned.
The Independent Care Group said the Government must either make social care providers exempt from the increase or ring-fence funding to pay for it.
In Wednesday’s Autumn Statement, the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, increased employer’s National Insurance by 1.2 per cent and lowered the threshold at which employers have to pay the tax on a worker’s earnings, from £9,100 to £5,000.
The ICG says that increase, allied to steep rises in wages, could have a devastating impact on social care providers, forcing some to leave the sector. That would increase the number of people going without care, which topped 2m for the first time last month.
ICG chair Mike Padgham added: “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 added that 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.