NI tax seize ‘will see medical doctors and dentists shutting their doorways except guidelines change’, well being leaders warn

Doctors, dentists and pharmacists will be forced to shut their doors and leave patients without care if they are not exempt from the National Insurance hike, health leaders have warned.

GPs have called for ‘urgent assurances’ from the Health Secretary that they will not have to pay the higher rate of employer contributions announced in the Budget.

They say surgeries are already struggling to fund the clinical and administrative staff they need.

And they fear the tax rise will be the ‘straw that breaks the camel’s back’, with patients left to ‘bear the brunt’ of redundancies and closures.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced the raid on Wednesday, with organisations representing care homes and hospices also voicing concerns about the sector’s ability to plug the funding gap.

Dr David Wrigley, a GP and deputy chairman of the British Medical Association, said the impact of the rise would be ‘monumental’.

And Dr Richard West, whose Suffolk practice serves 16,000 patients, said: ‘Our accountants have calculated the practice will incur additional costs of £140,000 from April. This includes costs associated with the rise in employers’ NICs and the Living Wage. This is equivalent to several senior clinical staff.’

The Independent Pharmacies Association said the ‘dramatic increases’ in National Insurance and the minimum wage will be a ‘wrecking ball’ that risks putting many out of business.

It estimates the overall cost to the independent community pharmacy sector would be more than £125 million, equal to £12,002 for an average pharmacy per year.

Meanwhile, Care England, which represents providers in adult social care, said the NI and wage rises will leave the sector with ‘an additional circa £2.4 billion funding hole to plug’.

Under the changes announced by Ms Reeves, employers’ contributions will increase by 1.2 percentage points to 15 per cent from April, and firms will have to start paying for staff who earn more than £5,000 a year, down from the current £9,100.

The Government had said the public sector would be exempt, but Treasury minister Darren Jones told BBC Question Time that GP practices were ‘not part of the public sector’ and would be subject to the extra taxes.

The Royal College of GPs has contacted Health Secretary Wes Streeting for assurance that practices will be protected like ‘the rest of the NHS and public sector’. RCGP chairman Professor Kamila Hawthorne said: ‘We have serious concerns about the impact of the increase in NI employer contributions on GP practices, many of whom are already struggling to keep their doors open, due to historic chronic underfunding.

‘For some, this extra financial burden will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, forcing them to make tough decisions on redundancies or even closing their practice. Ultimately, it is our patients who will bear the brunt.’

Mr Streeting vowed before the election to shift billions of pounds of funding from hospitals to GPs, saying this would ‘fix the front door to the NHS’.

A No 10 spokesman yesterday said contracted workers, including GPs, were not eligible for an exemption from the NICs hike, which she said was consistent with the approach of previous governments. But she suggested GP surgeries could receive extra support later in the year.

Paul Rees, of the National Pharmacy Association, said: ‘It would be an insult if the Government was able to offer support to GPs with the National Insurance rise but not hard working pharmacies, who have faced nearly a decade of cuts in funding and are shutting at record rates.’

The British Dental Association has also written to the Chancellor’. It said: ‘Make no mistake, these cost increases will have an impact on access to NHS dentistry.’

The Chancellor spent yesterday at Accord Healthcare in Newcastle, where she welcomed a £50 million deal to build a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility to provide medicines for the NHS.