National insurance: What will the hike mean for general practice?

What is changing?

In the autumn budget the chancellor of the exchequer, Rachel Reeves, announced an increase in national insurance contributions paid by employers to 15% on salaries above £5000 from April next year, up from 13.8% on salaries above £9100.1 The NHS and the rest of the public sector are exempt from the increase, but social care and GP surgeries are not. The Treasury chief secretary, Darren Jones, justified this on BBC’s Question Time on 31 October by saying “GPs are privately owned partnerships, they’re not part of the public sector” and that “they will therefore have to pay.”

How have doctors’ leaders reacted?

The Royal College of General Practitioners and the BMA have demanded urgent assurances that practices will be given the same protection as the rest of the NHS and public sector. Without extra funding to cover the additional costs, they warn that some practices will be forced to close. In a letter to Jones, Katie Bramall-Stainer, chair of the BMA’s General Practitioners Committee for England, said that his comments that general practices were not part of the public sector came as a “huge shock to the profession, many of whom simply will not be able to afford these increases, and will have to reduce their staff and services, or even close their doors entirely.”2

The letter said that previous governments followed the principle that increases to …