TORY rebel Sir Christopher Chope described the tax hike to fund health and social care as a “dog’s dinner” and said it will “lose the trust” of the party’s electors.

The Christchurch MP was one of five Conservative backbenchers to vote against Boris Johnson’s controversial £12billion tax increase.

Despite the small opposition among Tory MPs, the proposed 1.25 percentage point increase in national insurance increase contributions passed by 319 votes in favour to 248 against.

Sir Christopher said he thought the pandemic was being used as a “cover” to go against manifesto promises.

He said: “I was worried about the suggestion that we got elected on a manifesto promising to reform social care and promising people not to increase taxes.

“[Mr Johnson] kept talking about the pandemic, I said ‘how would we have funded the social care proposals if we had not had a pandemic without having to raise taxes’, a perfectly straight forward question.

“He was incoherent which suggested to me the Covid explanation was a cover for us having gone back on our manifesto commitments.

“Fundamental in politics is trust, if you forfeit the trust of electors, it is very difficult to get it back again.

“I think this has forfeited the trust and that is what worries me so much.”

Mr Chope said, despite taxpayers paying more from April next year, they wouldn’t feel the benefits until at least 2023.

He continued: “We are taking an unjustified tax increase which is in breach of manifesto commitments.

“Then the question is how else should we balance the books? My suggestion is by reducing the bureaucracy, we could have 25 per cent fewer civil servants without an adverse impact on services.

“This has a similar problem to the pole tax. We were charging the duke and the dustman the same.

“The government has made it a lot more complicated, and we have ended up with a dog’s dinner, it is not going to satisfy anybody.

“I think the government has got the wrong answer.

“Time will prove that there will be a very strong reaction against it, particularly when people see the reported benefits are illusory.”

Sir Christopher was joined by Sir John Redwood, Esther McVey, Philip Davies and Neil Hudson in the no lobby for the House of Commons vote.