Black and Asian Britons could be especially hard-hit by
plans laid out by the government on Tuesday to hike workers' national insurance
contributions to help fund ballooning social care and health costs, campaigners
and economists said.
اضافة اعلان
Facing a hefty bill for the COVID-19 pandemic, British Prime
Minister Boris Johnson also announced a rise in the tax on shareholder
dividends, stressing that none of the country's lowest earners "will pay a
penny" in contributions.
But despite Johnson's assurances, critics said workers and
families from ethnic minority groups would be disproportionately affected by
the national insurance (NI) increase because they are concentrated in
lower-income segments.
"An increase in national insurance will have a
disproportionate impact on ethnic minority people across the country,"
said Alba Kapoor, senior policy officer at race equality think-thank the
Runnymede Trust.
"Countless Black and ethnic minority workers rely on
low-paid and precarious jobs and are likely to be amongst those hit hardest by
the rise. Families struggling to make ends meet should not have to fix the
social care crisis in this country."
A Runnymede Trust report published in February exposed how
wealth distribution in Britain splits along ethnic lines.
"For every £1 of white British wealth, Pakistani
households have around 50p, Black Caribbean households around 20p, and Black
African and Bangladeshi households approximately 10p," the report said.
Exposed by COVID
Johnson said his government's effort to fix the long-term
social care costs "so cruelly exposed by COVID" would raise an
estimated £36 billion over the next three years, with the money ring-fenced for
health and social care costs.
"You can't fix the
COVID backlogs without giving the
NHS (National Health Service) the money it needs; you can't fix the NHS without
fixing social care," Johnson told a packed chamber of government and opposition
lawmakers.
"You can't fix social care without removing the fear of
losing everything to pay for social care; and you can't fix health and social
care without long-term reform."
Critics said Tuesday's announcement of a 1.25 percentage
point increase from April on NI contributions would also take a heavier toll on
younger age groups, where members of ethnic minorities are also more heavily
represented.
In June, policy research organization Race on the Agenda
(Rota) and the Trades Union Congress published a report that showed that Black
and minority ethnic (BME) women were almost twice as likely to be on zero-hours
contracts as white men.
People employed on such terms have no guaranteed working
hours.
"There is lots of evidence to show that BME workers are
likely to be at the lower end of the income spectrum and that these communities
are demographically young and so are impacted more by measures that target
younger workers," said Maurice Mcleod, chief executive of Rota.
"(The NI increase) is a totally unfair burden to place
on a generation which will see the price of living and housing going up, while
their earnings struggle," Mcleod added, referring to the relative wealth
of the so-called Baby Boomer generation.
It will also be a further burden on young workers who have
been badly affected by the pandemic, said Helen Morrissey, senior pension and
retirement analyst at financial services company Hargreaves Lansdown.
"The cost of paying for care affects the whole family
and younger generations often provide support at the cost of their own
financial stability, both today and in the future," she told the Thomson
Reuters Foundation.
Unprecedented burden
Johnson was returning to an election pledge to address
Britain's creaking social care system, where costs are projected to double as
the population ages over the next two decades.
Questions about long-term social care costs have dogged
British governments — Conservative, Labour or coalition — for years.
Despite the deep differences over how such reforms should be
implemented, for Len Shackleton, professor of economics at the University of
Buckingham, the current national insurance system "is well past its sell
by date".
For people earning less than about 50,000 pounds per year,
employers deduct 12 percent in NI contributions, but for those earning more,
that drops to 2 percent.
"So clearly, it has a disproportionate impact on people
who are lower earners — not very poor earners, but (those earning less) than
50,000 pounds a year," said Shackleton, who is also a research fellow at
the Institute of Economic Affairs think-tank.
Demographics plays a part, too, he said.
According to Britain's 2011 national census, while 13
percent of all white people in Britain were aged over 70, that figure falls to
3.9 percent of Asian and 4.5 percent of Black people respectively.
Conversely, for those aged between 18 and 24, these figures
are 8.9 percent, 12.9 percent and 10.6 percent respectively.
"As a proportion of the age group, BAME people (aged)
18 to 25 are a much larger proportion, than ... of the 70-plus,"
Shackleton said.
"So in a sense you could argue — I wouldn't want to go
down that line too far — but you could argue that you've got Black and minority
ethnic people subsidizing white people," he added.
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