The recent announcement of a rise in National Insurance contributions for workers, including lower-paid workers, is another example of the Conservatives looking after the rich.

It’s in the name. The Conservative Party likes to conserve. It likes things to stay more or less the way they have always been. And one thing there has always been in this country is inequality. The think tank the Resolution Foundation reported earlier this year that the share of total UK wealth held by the richest one per cent is 23 per cent.

The way to fund the obvious needs of the NHS and the social care system is to tax the richest. They may not even notice. But it seems that whenever the Conservatives want to raise more money, people less well-off have to pay.

We saw this in recent years with Austerity, which happened after 2010. The Conservatives decided to deal with a budget deficit then by making big cuts to public spending. More than £5 billion was cut from social care budgets - yes, social care budgets - between 2010 and 2016. Over the same period, national spending on local government was halved. In Hertfordshire, 93 per cent of schools saw cuts to their funding between 2015 and 2019.

This year, the Government responded to financial pressures by cutting the foreign aid budget from 0.7 to 0.5 per cent of gross national income. The chief executive of the British Red Cross, Mike Adamson, said the cut would “exacerbate an already devastating reality for millions of people in need of urgent assistance”. To put this £4 billion cut in aid into some context, the 20 richest people in the UK were worth a combined £218.6 billion in 2018, according to the Sunday Times Rich List, having increased their cumulative wealth by £33.5 billion in the previous year.

Now this increase in national insurance contributions is going to affect lower earners, including NHS and social care staff, who have worked so hard during the pandemic. Talking of the pandemic, the Resolution Foundation found that inequality has actually increased during it.

By the way, Watford’s Conservative MP Dean Russell voted in Parliament for the huge cut in overseas aid, and for the recent hike in National Insurance contributions.

Apparently many less well-off people voted for this government at the last election. Did they know what the Conservatives are like?

What we have been seeing is less well-off people, not just in this country but globally, unfairly being hit by them.

Kevin Gannon

Watford