Liberal Democrat leader to tell his party conference taxes would be raised, if necessary, to pay for beefed-up provision

Tim Farron will tell the Liberal Democrat conference that the party would rebrand the NHS to include a fully taxpayer-funded care service, warning that governments must be honest about raising taxes to ease the healthcare crisis.

In his leader’s speech in Brighton on Tuesday, Farron will say the party needs to be honest about the costs of making social care fully government-funded.

“If the only way to fund a health service that meets the needs of everyone is to raise taxes, Liberal Democrats will raise taxes,” he will say, promising to campaign to transform the NHS into the National Health and Care Service.

“For years, politicians have chosen to paper over the cracks rather than come clean about what it will really take – what it will really cost – not just to keep the NHS afloat but to give people the care and the treatment that they deserve.

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“If the great Liberal William Beveridge [1879-1963] had written his blueprint today, when people are living to the ages they are now, there is no doubt he would have proposed a National Health and Care Service.”

The party insists it believes there is enough affection for the NHS for British people to feel positive about paying more taxes, not normally seen as an election-winning strategy.

The Lib Dem leader will talk about his own grandfather’s Alzheimer’s disease, saying the first home he was put in was “despicable”.

“I’ve seen enough terrible old people’s homes,” he will say. “It’s not civilised to let people slip through the net. It’s not civilised towards the people who love those people, who go out of their way to try and make their lives easier when everything else is making their lives harder. It’s not civilised and it’s not good enough.”



Earlier in the week Lib Dem health spokesman Norman Lamb told the conference the government should consider moulding national insurance into a ringfenced NHS and social care tax, to make it easier to increase the amount paid with public support.

An expert panel – which the party will call its Beveridge commission – will report back to the party in six months on the costs, but Lamb suggested the tax could mean an increase of a “an extra penny in the pound”.

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Farron will say the Lib Dems “will not join the ranks of those politicians who are too scared of losing votes to face up to what really needs to be done”.

“We will go to the British people with the results of our Beveridge commission and we will offer a new deal for health and social care, honest about the cost, bold about the solution.”

Earlier on Monday, Lamb announced cross-party support for a commission into the NHS funding crisis, backed by Labour MP and former leadership contender Liz Kendall, and Tory MP Dan Poulter, a former gynaecologist.

Speaking to the Lib Dem conference in Brighton, Kendall said it would be politically difficult to dedicate a new tax to the NHS. “It’s very tough for anybody in any party to say any tax should go up,” she said.

“That’s the reality, however passionately we might think this is the right solution, but certainly when Labour was in government and we did the penny on NI [national insurance] for the NHS, it was a semi-hypothecation to say it’s going to go on this specifically. It’s an important option.”