Another tax on the horizon?

I watched Andy Burnham’s statement in the House of Commons this afternoon as he set out the Governments Green Paper on a national care service for the elderly.

I might be confused here, but don’t we all contribute to the NHS and its related services through our taxes already and isn’t the care of the population one of the remits of the NHS?

Perhaps, if the government was better focused on not wasting so much of our tax money, there might be enough to start building up reserves to begin to cover this need.

For once I was impressed by the comments made by Andrew Lansley, the shadow spokesman. He quite rightly chastised the government for not doing enough to begin solving this problem when they came to power 12 years ago – see the full debate here.

I think I’ve paid as much tax as I possible can over my lifetime, but it looks like even what I have saved won’t be enough to cover any extra care that I might need in later life. It will be interesting to see what comes out in future discussions, as with an impending election, the political parties all begin to offer promise after promise to get our vote.