Health Centres Hit By National Insurance Hike - Christine Jardine
Concerns about pressure on GP surgeries is not a new thing to Queensferry and Kirkliston. Practitioners and patients both understand the reality.
In the past two weeks I have been approached by surgeries in my constituency concerned about the Impact of employer NI charges. It could cost some around £20k a year.
Like charities, independent care providers, nhs dentists, pharmacies and hospices, they will get no exemption from the increases to employers National Insurance contributions, in the way that publicly owned services will.
For some practices that is going mean tens of thousands of pounds more on their annual salary bill.
In the seven years that I have been the MP for Edinburgh West the pressure on our primary care services have been reflected in an ever-increasing number of emails about shortages of GPs or difficulty getting appointments.
At Prime Minister’s Questions I told Keir Starmer I had been contacted by practices across Edinburgh West with their genuine fears they will not be able to offer the standard of care they do at the moment because of National Insurance Increases.
I asked him to come to the constituency with the Chancellor to explain to them how they should cope without government support. The answer did not deliver the comfort and certainty required.
This week, I felt more acutely than before that the cradle to grave NHS care that we all take for granted may be under serious threat.
As a Liberal Democrat I initially welcomed, warmly, the UK Government’s investment in our NHS which will bring more than £4bn to Scotland over the next two years.
But now I am frustrated and disappointed that the total package does not offer the protection to those needing medical care that we had anticipated.
But we need more than empty rhetoric.
With my colleagues in the Liberal Democrats I have written to the Chancellor Rachel Reeves expressing our concern and calling on her to exempt GP surgeries, social care providers, hospices, NHS dentists, charitable providers of health and care, and pharmacies from theincrease in employers' National Insurance contributions.
We all, the working people that the Government tells us they want to protect, need her to listen.