A national care tax is the chancellor’s best hope for restoring our broken system

Similar proposals appeared in an early draft of December’s Tory manifesto before Boris Johnson got cold feet. He cannot afford a repeat, writes Andrew Grice

It’s the one tax rise that will appeal to fiscal hawk Rishi Sunak (Reuters)

What a difference 10 years makes. In 2010, a Conservative-led government facing an annual deficit of £158bn (10 per cent of GDP), after the financial crisis, began a decade of spending cuts that reduced it to £39bn.

Today, a Tory government is suddenly looking at a deficit of about £300bn (15 per cent of GDP), compared to the £55bn forecast in the March Budget. The stockpile of debt, which is supposed to be falling, will be an eye-watering 100 per cent of GDP thanks to the coronavirus crisis. Yet the response from ministers has been very different.

A leaked Treasury document floated tax rises or spending cuts of between £25bn and £30bn to “stabilise debts”. But Rishi Sunak is in no hurry to do either.