Secret Thatcher-era memo undermines Sunak’s plan to scrap national insurance

Former chancellor Nigel Lawson, who PM cites as inspiration, warned merging NICs with income tax would ‘create many losers’

A secret, unpublished memo from Margaret Thatcher’s tax-cutting chancellor Nigel Lawson warned against merging national insurance and income tax because it would “create many losers” including pensioners.

The advice in the memo will be a blow to Rishi Sunak, who has said it is his ambition to scrap the tax on workers. He has called Lawson a “transformational chancellor and an inspiration to me and many others”, and said one of the first things he did as chancellor in Boris Johnson’s government was to hang a portrait of Lawson above his desk.