So beleaguered Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, must spend her summer contemplating how to winkle out more cash from a disgruntled, debt-laden nation amid concerns over the cost of living and at a time when the Government is menaced by populists on both flanks. It is not the ideal backdrop for a relaxing break over the recess.
He does not put it like that, of course. Kinnock has suggested to The i Paper that following imposition of VAT on private school fees, the Government should follow suit by removing its exemption on private healthcare. He argues this would provide “vital funding” for the national health service – an estimated £2bn a year, according to the Good Growth Foundation – while commanding widespread public support.
For a start, analysts say private healthcare must include a wide range of services from opticians through to osteopaths if that £2bn sum is to be obtained. And as tax expert Dan Neidle – a Labour supporter – has pointed out on social media, much of the spending on private medicine comes from businesses, which could reclaim these costs. Additionally, the move would allow private insurers such as Bupa to recover their own VAT costs, so ending the exemption might end up losing money.
The 83-year-old former leader seems trapped in the past. He is playing still to the gallery from an era before reality intruded so painfully on Britain’s delusions, when the NHS was hailed as envy of the world and private medicine seen as a diabolical intruder. Such illusions have been shredded by the long waiting lists, patient safety scandals and comparatively poor treatment outcomes. A YouGov poll of 6,642 people in response to this daft idea found fewer than one-third of voters in favour.
square IAN BIRRELL An academic, an arrogant minister and a fight for equality that has gone horribly wrong
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Yet earlier this year Starmer heralded a new partnership with the private sector to “make the spaces, the facilities and resources of private hospitals more readily available to the NHS” in his desperate effort to slash waiting lists, adding to raised eyebrows that he was “not interested in putting ideology before patients”.
Europe shows that well-run public and properly-regulated private services can work effectively together, delivering higher quality care than the creaking NHS. Kinnock’s intervention simply reminds us again that he was the Labour leader who lost two general elections, handing Sir John Major the largest popular vote share in British electoral history. His Labour successors would do well to ignore his latest advice.
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