The successive governments have been utterly idiotic about it too for a long time, even recently cutting nursing bursaries, constantly freezing pay, while simultaneously claiming for the last two decades we need mass immigration for the nursing shortage.
Scrap the high income cap on national insurance contributions and pay for the nurses!
> claiming for the last two decades we need mass immigration for the nursing shortage.
Which is particularly funny, as immigrants are usually claimed to not take jobs from natives because they create demand, thus creating more jobs. Is nursing supposed to be an exception?
There's no "high income cap" on NICs. There's a lower rate for employees above a certain level but this is offset by a higher income tax rate which occurs at the same pay level so that the combined rate of tax and NICs goes 0%-12%-32%-42% for people who are paid evenly throughout the year (it then gets a bit weird above £100k because the marginal rates become 62% then back to 42% then 47% above £150k/year).
Employers pay 13.8% of all earnings above the "secondary threshold" with no reduction.
(There's a good case for effectively removing that 12% bit by moving up the point where you start to pay NICs to align with the personal allowance and for assessing NICs annually instead of weekly/monthly. There are also complicating factors like under 21s partly and over state pension age fully not paying NICs too).
I've also never heard a politician say that "mass immigration" is needed because of nurses, and indeed it would be not be most people's idea of "mass immigration" even if every single nurse working in the NHS were an immigrant - there are around 300,000 nurses working in the NHS.
You admit there's a cap, but then claim there isn't. Nice. Ever hear of double think?
It's a nice little tax dodge rich people get away with, then point at just the higher income tax without mentioning the massively regressive NICs.
Scrap the cap, most people won't be affected, new nurses, win.
Tax for the rich has been too low for too long in the UK and it needs to be increased. Scrapping the NIC cap is an easy way, with it being confusing enough that they can make it sound like there's no tax increase at all.
Instead, they're targeting self-employed and business owners with tax hikes on dividends in another, confusing, utterly stupid, shoot yourself in the foot move. Because the thing you want to do when the economy is sluggish is make it more expensive to run a small business.
Currently income related taxes upto the "high earning level" of £50k is a marginal rate of about 40% (including employer NI)
From £50k-60k it increases to 49%, however if you have a couple of kids it increases to 65%. From £60k to 100k it's back down to 49%
Your proposal would increase single income households on average post-tax pay to a marginal tax rate of 80%. 95% if you include bsc/msc student loan repayments, and over 100% with 3 kids.
In the meantime millionaire pensioners sitting with twice the post-tax post-housing income are paying a marginal rate of 20%.
Why scrap the high income cap on insurance contributions? That's going to disincentivize the wealthy to participate in England's economy. I think there's a solution that would help the NHS and restore civic trust - cut immigration for welfare recipients. Fewer immigrants on welfare = better functioning society for Britain.
Scrap the high income cap on national insurance contributions and pay for the nurses!