New ComRes poll for the Daily Mirror shows 82% of voters, across all the main parties, would support a 1p rise in National Insurance contributions to fund NHS
New @ComRes poll for the @DailyMirror on the NHS is very interesting. 81% of Conservative voters and 86% of Labour voters in support a 1% increase in National Insurance contributions to fund the NHS. pic.twitter.com/Zr2wIabzjL
— TSE (@TSEofPB) June 5, 2018
There’s a new ComRes poll out for The Daily Mirror on the NHS which shows really strong support for a 1p increase in National Insurance contributions to fund the NHS. The findings seems to reaffirm Lord Lawson’s view that “the NHS is the closest thing the English people have to a religion.”
ComRes say
The findings are revealed in the wake of yesterday’s dramatic intervention by Gordon Brown who warned that with mounting financial pressures and an ageing population, the NHS is in dire need of help and called for a repeat of his 1p rise in National Insurance to rescue it.
Tonight’s poll also shows the underlying political importance of the issue, with almost one in five people (18%) who say they would definitely be willing to change their vote at the next election in favour of a party which pledged additional NHS funding, and a further one in three (33%) who would probably be prepared to do so. In a warning to the Government and Theresa May, more than four in ten Conservative voters (41%) say they would definitely or probably be prepared to switch vote as a result of the issue.
Importantly, the poll reveals the source of such strength of voter opinion. When asked if the quality of service in the NHS has improved, stayed the same or declined since 2010, the year when the Conservative-led Coalition took power, 55% of voters answered negatively while just 9% said the quality of service in the NHS had improved. There is significant variation in perceptions across the country, with fully three quarters of people living in the North East of England who say the quality has declined (75%), compared to 48% in Scotland and 45% in Wales.
You can see why Vote Leave made the NHS such an important part of the referendum just like NO2AV did in the AV referendum.
The question is if a party does propose this will there be a backlash like there was with the dementia tax?
TSE
Fieldwork note: ComRes interviewed 1,073 GB adults online on 5th June 2018. Data were weighted to be representative of all adults by region, gender and age.