Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance – in the Senedd at 1:52 pm on 24 January 2018.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:52, 24 January 2018

Well, I understand the point the Member makes, and hypothecation in the sense that people can see what they get for what they pay does have an influence on public acceptability. He will know that successive Chancellors at the UK level have always had antipathy to hypothecation in that way, but where I think the Member is right is that, in the scheme that Professor Gerry Holtham has put forward, and is the basis for these discussions, he does draw on the issue of public acceptability elsewhere, and he uses the example in Japan where there is unhypothecated tax towards social care, but you don't start to pay it until you're 40. Now, I suppose in crude terms you could say that people up to the age of 40 don't believe they're going to get old and don't think this is ever going to be them. Once you turn that corner, you begin to realise that investment in these services may be something that you yourself will have an interest in before all that long, and, in fact, in the Japanese model, as I remember it, the amount you pay towards the tax goes up as you get older. So, the closer you get to the point where you may benefit from it, the more acceptable making a contribution to it appears to get. So, in that sense, I think the Holtham work tends to bear out the general proposition that Mr Hamilton made.