Exempt hospices from increase in employers’ national insurance: Petition Parliament

[Bosky]

Exempt hospices from increase in employers’ national insurance

Hospices support the NHS in providing end of life care and support to those with life limiting illnesses.

The NHS and the public sector have been exempted from the increase in employers NIC increase. We think the same should apply to hospices.

Hospices only receive roughly a third of their funding from the government, the rest is raised from donations.

Around 70% of the cost of running hospices is staffing costs.

Hospices care supports the work of the NHS and we think it must be a priority.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/700550

all Charities should be exempt. Not just hospices

I agree with the pp and was just thinking this, particularly regarding rape crisis, when I saw the comment. Anyway signed.

IcaketherforeIam - thank you!

MajorCarolDanvers

There are already "tax relief" arrangements for all charities:
www.gov.uk/charities-and-tax/tax-reliefs

The issue here is the increase in National Insurance Contributions that employers pay for employees. The Government has decided that public bodies, such as the NHS, do not have to pay the increased rate of NIC.

Unlike many charities, around 70% of the cost of running hospices is staffing costs, ie. providing direct charitable services. These are services that, arguably, should be being provided by the statutory sector, ie. public bodies and the NHS.

It is already very hard for people to get hospice services when they need them. Take a look at these Mumsnet Boards, for example:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/life_limiting_illness

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/elderly_parents

Some hospices are already operating at 2/3 capacity because they cannot afford to pay staff due to rising costs and the drop in charitable donations across the sector during and since 2020, linked to the Covid pandemic.

The additional income generated for the public purse by increasing NIC for hospices will be wiped out or the total might be reduced due to hospices having to reduce staffing levels or closing altogether.

Local communities, and women in particular as the main carers in most cases, will suffer as a result of the government's failure to exempt hospices from the NIC increase.

This decision was ill-considered and it is shocking that the Government did not do a sharp U-Turn when the consequences were pointed out to them.

There has been a lot of publicity about the estimated number of pensioners who suffer and die as a result of the changes to Winter Fuel Allowance. By contrast, there has been very little publicity about the number of people, not all of them elderly, who will suffer in agony and die in agony due to lack of hospice care as a result of the increase in NIC levied on hospices.

Whatever anyone's thoughts about charities in general, I would hope that this Petition gets a lot more support than it has currently garnered.

So does that mean that the employees contributions would fall short? How would they be compensated for that?
Is the proposal that all public service employees should have smaller contributions made by their employer, presumably brought up to the level of everyone else by the government,ie tax payers subsidies?
As I understand it, almost 20% of the population work in public services, and I don’t know how many more for charities. That is a hefty subsidy.

So does that mean that the employees contributions would fall short?

For hospices, it would mean that they would have to reduce the number of employees because they cannot afford to pay the extra NIC.

Exempting the public sector, including the NHS, from the increase in NICs and the consequent impact on the public purse is a separate issue that can be argued one way or the other, eg. that the Government has a statutory duty imposed by Parliament to provide specific public services and the NIC increase exemption enables the Government to continue to meet its statutory obligations.

The NHS, as a statutory service funded by public taxation, is not barred from providing hospice services but it, and by extension the Government (all governments), has chosen to prioritise other services and to rely on the charitable sector to fill the gap.

Hospices do receive some public funding in recognition of this but the majority of funding comes from charitable donations.

Yikes - sadly not. They barely pay tax anyway, and some are huge businesses.

There are over 200 hospices in the UK run by charities. Whatever their size, they are not "businesses" as businesses are, by definition, run for profit.

www.hospiceuk.org/about-us/key-facts-about-hospice-care

Every point you made applies to most charities.

they are all suffering because of the NI rise.

they should all be exempt.