Voters broadly accept Reeves’s £40bn of tax rises, research shows
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Almost half of those surveyed by Bristol academics said increases were ‘necessary’ to improve public services. Voters have broadly accepted that the £40bn in tax rises in Rachel Reeves’s first budget are “necessary” to improve public services, despite the majority expecting to be worse off as a result, according toresearch.
The chancellor announced in October a package of tax increases in order to fund investment in public services, particularly the NHS and schools – with the largest revenue-raiser a £25bn increase in employer national insurance contributions (NICs). In a survey of 5,800 voters, carried out by academics at the University of Bristol, 48% of respondents thought the tax rises were “necessary”, 18% were neutral, 24% thought them “unnecessary”, and 10% said they did not know.
Mubin Haq, the chief executive of the abrdn Financial Fairness Trust, which commissioned the research, said: “People are willing to pay more in tax if that means improvements to public services. They recognise that our schools, hospitals and other essential services are under huge strain and in need of investment.”.
Support for the tax increases came despite more than half of those surveyed (57%) expecting to be worse off as a result. Older voters were more likely to believe that they would be negatively affected, presumably because of Reeves’s controversial decision to remove the winter fuel allowance from the vast majority of pensioners.
