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Geoff Butcher, of the Blackadder Corporation, which owns a number of care homes in England, said he believes the rise in national insurance contributions (NICs) for employers could lead to some homes having to shut.
According to the PA news agency, he told the Today programme:
We will certainly not be taking on additional staff. We will be having to cut back on improvement.
So this morning I was supposed to be going to a home to look at investing in a small extension and a new passenger lift. That almost certainly will have to go.
Staff costs are 80% of our total cost. We’ve got nowhere to go on this.”
During these contract negotiations for our new contract, unless we’re getting given suitable remuneration to cover this national insurance inflation, then we’re going to really struggle.
There are going to be practices to start to make redundancies. There are practices that were already considering redundancies because it’s so hard to manage financially, and if we don’t get enough money to continue to run these practices, then we’re not going to be able to provide the service that people want.”
How general practice is funded, this isn’t about GPs, this isn’t about my wage. I don’t want an increase in my wage. What I want to be able to do is to is to provide the same service that I’m providing now, if not better, in the future.”
Yes, we are classed as private businesses, but the money that we get to run that business isn’t generated by profit, as I’m sure you can imagine, in terms of we aren’t charging people for service.
The government give us a specific amount to run our general practice, which is based on the number of patients we have. The amount of money that we are getting at the moment is the same as we were getting in 2018.”
It is a huge amount of money and our staff costs do equate to, I would probably say, about 65-70% of all of the costs of the practice.
I think what we’re looking at is an unfunded increase in our staffing costs, which may ultimately impact on our resources and our staffing levels.”
We are urging the chancellor to change course and exempt GPs from a tax hike.
This new government must not make the same mistakes as the Conservatives, fixing the GP crisis is crucial for saving the NHS. Continue reading…
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