Today’s Mail on Sunday has raised the possibility that Gordon Brown is planning a large increase in taxes if Labour is still in power after the next election.

The Government is said to be considering imposing an increase in National Insurance contributions after the next General Election to help pay the cost of care for the elderly, it was claimed yesterday.

The controversial idea, which is intended to save people from having to sell their homes to cover the cost of care bills in their old age, will be revealed in a Government plan for long-term care for the elderly, according to recent reports.

The plan to increase National Insurance cntributions will confirm doubts that Labour knows that it will have no choice but to raise taxes after the next Election.

Last night the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, Vince Cable, condemned the NI plan as ‘an income tax rise by another name’.

Mr Cable urged the Prime Minister to reduce unnecessary public spending instead by cancelling the renewal of the Trident nuclear deterrent and by reducing generous public-sector pensions.

Health Secretary Andy Burnham will publish a consultation paper called Care And Support later this month, detailing how to reform social care provision.

Recent estimates show that roughly 30% of people who have to go into a care home have to pay their own fees, and the average stay in a home is for two years, at a cost of about £25,000 a year, but in what has been said to be a postcode lottery, figures showed that in some parts of the country, elderly people are up to 15 times more likely in some areas than people in others to obtain State funding to help with the cost of their care home fees.