The government’s proposal to cover part of the cost of public sector pay increases by drastically increasing visa fees and the NHS surcharge is cynical and regressive (Who has been offered what? A breakdown of public sector pay deal, 13 July). These charges effectively constitute a poll tax that only affects individuals who are not allowed to vote against it.
Visa fees in the UK are already 10 times higher than for similar countries. For example, a German work visa costs €75 (£64), while a three-year UK work visa currently costs £719. That is without considering the cost of providing biometric information, which has increased from around £15 a few years ago to around £140 today.
The NHS surcharge is already fundamentally unfair. Like British citizens, most migrants already pay for the NHS through general taxation and national insurance. Migrants contribute more to taxation than they receive in benefits and studies have shown that migrants from many counties contribute more than the average British citizen. There is no fair justification for making migrants pay for the NHS twice in the first place let alone doubling the charge.
Visa fees should be set at a similar level to other developed countries, the unfair NHS surcharge should be abolished immediately, and the UK parliament should be brought in line with the Scottish parliament and the Welsh Senedd in giving all legal residents the right to vote in UK elections.
Dr James Parkhurst
Oxford
• As your editorial (13 July) notes, the government needs just a little extra funding to meet the pay and conditions demands of public sector workers that are crucial to the retention and recruitment of staff. You suggest additional tax charges, but there is another way to do this.
The government created about £900bn of new money to pay for the banking crises. To move this new money from the government sector, where it was created, to the private sector, where it was used, the Bank of England transferred that money to the UK’s commercial banks.
The banks did nothing to earn this money, and yet they are still paid the Bank of England base interest rate on the total sums they hold. When interest rates were under 1%, as they were from 2009 to 2021, these interest costs were insignificant. Now that the base rate is 5%, the sum paid has soared to more than £40bn a year.
There is no need for the Bank to pay base rate on all these deposits. To ensure the effectiveness of its interest rate policy it needs to pay base rate on some of them. Interest on £200bn should be enough to do this. The rest could enjoy interest at a very much lower rate: 0.1% should do. Japan and the eurozone already use such a two-tier interest rate system. If done here this would save around £30bn per year which is enough to meet all pay demands now being made of the government.
Richard Murphy
Professor of accounting practice, Sheffield University Management School
• Part of the concern over the pay and conditions of NHS staff is leakage to the private sector or overseas (Rishi Sunak driving doctors out of NHS with pay offer, say union leaders, 13 July). It used to be the case that public investment in their education provided a moral argument to give back in the interests of society. The marketisation of universities is coming home to roost, as doctors have paid around £50,000 to qualify. They are now on the market, as was the intention of the policies towards universities, and that sense of social responsibility is wearing thin. This should not be a surprise to the Tories because the notion of a public good is anathema to their worship of the markets. You reap what you sow.
Norman Gowar
London
