At our August meeting members debated and unanimously supported the following motion on raising wealth taxes to fund the NHS, and then agreed to submit this as our motion for the Labour Party Conference which takes place this coming September in Liverpool.  The motion is as follows:

Raising Taxes to Fund the NHS

Conference notes:

On Wednesday 5 July, the Health and Social Care Secretary officially stated that “the NHS is broken”.

On Monday 29th July, the Chancellor of the Exchequer in a statement announced a budget shortfall of £22 billion, left by the last government. As part of this statement cuts to the NHS building plans and the Winter Fuel Allowance were announced.

However, on 9 July 2024 HMRC reported “continued evidence of a recovery in numbers of non-domiciled taxpayers since the height of the Covid-19 pandemic”. Previously Tax Justice UK identified ten tax reforms, outside raising the main income tax, VAT, etc. rates which would raise £60 billion a year for public services.

Our National Policy Forum report stated that Labour will “tax fairly”, but left for further consideration the detail of how to do that, in an era of rising inequality.

Increased public investment is an essential lever to get growth such as will bring tax revenues, but it requires funds upfront.

Taxes on wealth and capital gains would affect few ordinary-income households, and make the tax system fairer.

Conference therefore calls for such tax rises focused on the wealthy to fund restoring the NHS and other public services.