Letters 3

If I had two letters published by the press last year, I also had one printed quite recently, this year. It was written in the Holiday Inn, Keele:-

UK businesses benefit hugely from the NHS, by having a healthy and well workforce, helping to deliver on their corporate goals. They tell us rightly that they are an integral part of our social fabric. Why then, in all of the discussion of the tax increases required to return NHS funding to its past levels (let alone give it the capacity to cope in the context of the horrendous cuts to social care and other services supporting the vulnerable), has there been no discussion of significant rises in corporation tax?

The idea of hypothecation, whether soft or hard, could also be extended to the taxes paid by business. In that way, a significant and transparent percentage would be clearly seen to be going to pay for our national health and care services.

Such an arrangement would also throw into stark relief the impact of the various tax-avoidance schemes developed by the finance industry and big four accountancy firms. “Saving so many millions of tax charges” would then translate directly into “this is so much revenue we’ve removed from the NHS”.

Just after I sent it in, a friend pointed out that businesses also benefit from the service by having healthy consumers living longer...