Best of the financial columnists
How history shaped our health taxes
Paul Johnson
The Times
“History casts a long shadow,” says Paul Johnson. Just as the modern A1 largely follows the route of the old Roman road, so the current social care “mess” can be traced back to the National Assistance Act of 1946, the legislation that established the NHS and claimed to abolish the “infamously stringent” poor law (which put the poor in workhouses). However, it “didn’t quite”, since, unlike the NHS, social care remains needs and means-tested. As
