Majority support plans to fund NHS through tax hike
By Duncan Ferris
Date: Friday 21 Sep 2018
(Sharecast News) - More than half of people on both sides of the political spectrum agree the government should increase taxes in order to better fund public services, according to the British Social Attitudes survey.
The survey, carried out by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen), reported that the highest proportion of people were in favour of a tax boost for the last 15 years, with the research showing that most people's primary concern was health as 54% of voters backing more spending on the NHS.
Other concerns were education, which 26% of those surveyed supported more spending on, while 7% supported spending on housing.
With 60% of all respondents backing policies to increase NHS spending, there was 53% support from Conservative voters for a raise in taxes for public spending, the first time a majority of the party's voters backed the idea since 2002, when total public support was at an all-time high.
Overall, a third of voters think taxes should remain the same, while just 4% think they should decrease.
Theresa May indicated earlier this year that an increase in taxes will be necessary to fund a £20bn hike in the NHS's budget, with a green paper setting out the government's plan scheduled to come out before the end of the year.
Official figures on Friday showed that there should be more of taxpayers money available for the Autumn Budget than expected, enabling the Chancellor to lift public spending after years of austerity by the government.
In the spring, the Office for Budget Responsibility's forecast growth of borrowing to £37bn this tax year but if the year-on-year trend in borrowing in the first five months of this year is maintained it will total £27.7bn, or 1.3% of GDP, while if it matched last year's level in the final seven months of this fiscal year, it would total £32bn, still £5bn lass than the OBR predicted and 1.5% of GDP.
NatCen's head of public attitudes, Roger Harding, said that the survey results show that the country is "clearly tiring of austerity".
"The question for the government is whether their recent spending announcements have done enough to meet public demand for more public investment, including now from a majority of their own voters. The question for Labour is whether they can win over the many older people who support more spending but currently do not support the party," said Harding.
Email this article to a friend
or share it with one of these popular networks:
You are here: news
10 Lower Thames St,
London EC3R 6EN