Rockstar Roger Daltrey has warned Chancellor Rachel Reeves an increase in employers’ national insurance contributions will be “catastrophic” for cancer charities.
The Who singer is an honorary patron of the Teenage Cancer Trust and the band has played concerts to raise money for the charity.
He said the changes announced in the Budget, which will see a rise in contributions from 13.8% to 15% from April, will leave the charity facing stark choices.
“If we can’t raise more money we will have to lay people off,” he told The Daily Telegraph, saying he did not “like to think about the consequences” of getting rid of specialist nurses.
I'm incredibly angry because the Government is just throwing money at the NHS thinking that will solve all the problems, which it quite clearly won't, and it's being funded partly by taking money from charities like ours.
“To lose nurses would be catastrophic”.
The level at which employers start paying the tax on each employee’s salary will fall from £9,100 a year to £5,000
The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) said the contributions will cost the charity sector, which employs around 3% of the UK workforce, around £1.4 billion each year.
“I’m incredibly angry because the Government is just throwing money at the NHS thinking that will solve all the problems, which it quite clearly won’t, and it’s being funded partly by taking money from charities like ours.”
He said charities such as the Teenage Cancer Trust, Marie Curie Hospices and Macmillan Cancer Support nurses took “an awful lot of burden off the NHS” and the national insurance increase had “so little thought behind it”.
The 80-year-old singer, who was made a CBE in 2005 for his services to music and charities, said he would be inviting Health Secretary Wes Streeting to one of the trust’s 28 specialist units to show him the work done by healthcare charities.
NCVO chief executive Sarah Elliott said the planned national insurance increase will be “absolutely unsustainable” for many charities.
“Charities across the country are already in a dire situation, juggling a triple threat of rising demand, escalating costs and falling funding,” she said.
“This additional cost, for which there is no headroom in budgets to cover, will be devastating.”
