Patrick Christys: Tory MPs are more whipped than Prince Harry

So there we have it – Tory MPs are more whipped than Prince Harry. Only five of them rebelled against the government’s national insurance hike despite the fact that it broke a key manifesto pledge.

The social care levy is expected to raise £12 billion, which is all well and good, but it’s emerged that the lowest earners in society will have to fork out quite a lot more money

Downing Street said that a typical basic-rate taxpayer earning £24,100 will contribute around £180 more in NI in 2022-23, while a typical higher-rate taxpayer earning £67,100 will contribute £715 more.

Someone on a £50,000 salary could see their annual NI contributions rise by more than £500.

So, we all have a right to ask – how will this money be spent? Will we be getting value for money?

Boris has said that the money will be ring fenced for health and social care, but that’s a very wide fence and there are concerns the NHS will just gobble it all up and leave precious little for actual social care.

The tax hike came just a day after NHS bosses published adverts for 42 new chiefs on six-figure salaries, and that’s before we’ve got started on the diversity tsars.

An investigation discovered that the NHS wastes around £7.6 billion a year. The NHS overspends on everything from pills patients don’t need to expensive loo rolls. Specifically, the NHS reportedly spent £160 million on unnecessary pills, £432 million on management consultants, £1.2 billion in legal fees and compensation, and in the case of Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust, they spent 66p per loo roll, which unless they’re shopping at Waitrose in Knightsbridge, I struggle to see how they can justify.

Health bosses will be spending £453 million every day by next year — amid growing fears the NHS will swallow up all of the cash from the PM’s tax raid.

Experts said the Department of Health and Social Care is set to splash out 40 per cent of all government day-to-day spending from 2022.

So there are genuine concerns that the very thing this tax hike was designed to do, i.e. fund social care, might not even happen.

If it doesn’t, then the Conservative Party will have sold its principles down the river for absolutely nothing.

Just five Conservative MPs rebelled against the breaking of a manifesto pledge.

We are now paying the highest level of tax as a nation since World War Two, and for people who think that this will change one day, can I just point you in the direction of the Income Tax, which was introduced as a temporary measure in 1799 by Prime Minister William Pitt The Younger.

So these tax hikes aren’t going anywhere.

I think most people appreciate that social care needs reform, it needed a massive boost, and that that money has to come from somewhere. But what I don’t think people will tolerate is if this money isn’t actually well spent.

I think there’s a very real possibility that the Tories will have broken a manifesto pledge, hit people in the pocket, gone against their core low tax values and then we’ll see absolutely no improvement in social care whatsoever.