Britain today · Housing

Options on the table: Housing

Six housing policy options that genuinely span the political divide, each with the evidence for and against, a real costing where one exists, and where the idea has been proposed before — plus a full catalog of ways any of them could actually be paid for. No recommendation is made between them.

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How to read this page

Every figure is labelled with what kind of number it is — an official costing (NAO, OBR, HMRC, gov.uk), independent think-tank or academic modelling, advocacy-commissioned modelling, or, where the evidence genuinely doesn't support a number, “not reliably quantifiable” stated outright rather than guessed.
Every source states whether this page's research directly opened and read it, or only corroborated it via search or secondary coverage — shown as a small opened / reported via secondary source tag next to each citation.
Where two credible sources disagree — for instance VAT's per-point yield across different fiscal years, or two different campaign costings for a land value tax — both figures are shown, with the disagreement stated rather than resolved by picking one.
Each option is attributed to who actually champions it — named parties, think tanks or politicians — not to who a reader might assume would.

Option 1 of 6

Planning liberalisation / zoning reform

Replace case-by-case discretionary planning with a rules-based system, so compliant proposals are granted automatically

What it is

Britain’s planning system decides most applications case by case, weighing a local plan against "material considerations." Liberalisation proposals replace some or all of that discretion with clear rules: land is zoned in advance (e.g. "Growth," "Renewal," "Protected" areas) so a compliant proposal is granted without a fresh political decision each time, or narrower mechanisms like "street votes" let residents on a single street pre-authorise extensions and infill, sharing in the resulting value uplift.

Who champions it

YIMBY Alliance

Originated the street-votes concept (John Myers).

Policy Exchange

Developed street votes into an implementable design ("Strong Suburbs", Southwood & Hughes, Feb 2021).

Centre for Cities

Advocates a zonal "Growth / Renewal / Protected" system, paired with an infrastructure levy.

2020 Conservative government

The "Planning for the Future" White Paper (MHCLG, Boris Johnson/Robert Jenrick) proposed a zonal system; shelved in 2021 after the Chesham & Amersham by-election loss.

Labour government, 2023–25 (partial)

NPPF revisions strengthen mandatory local-plan housing targets but keep discretionary, case-by-case planning — a materially less radical mechanism than full zoning, not a pure adoption of this option.

Evidence for

Across 353 English local planning authorities (1974–2008), tighter planning restrictions substantively increase how strongly local house prices respond to local income growth — concentrated in urbanised areas and intensifying in booms.

The Impact of Supply Constraints on House Prices in England — Christian A. L. Hilber & Wouter Vermeulen, LSE/CPB — The Economic Journal 126(591) (2016)

Peer-reviewedOpened & read

Panel study across 353 English LPAs, 1974–2008; finds a substantive positive impact of regulatory constraint on the price–earnings elasticity.

Reviewing the international literature, land-use regulation raises house prices, reduces construction and reduces the responsiveness of housing supply — with potentially substantial efficiency losses, though the same review notes some regulation addresses genuine externalities.

Regulation and Housing Supply — Joseph Gyourko (Wharton) & Raven Molloy — NBER Working Paper 20536 (2014)

Working paper — not peer-reviewedOpened & read

Survey of the regulation–housing-supply literature; finds regulation raises prices and reduces construction/supply elasticity, while acknowledging some rules internalise genuine externalities.

Evidence against / risks

The clearest evidence against full liberalisation is political, not economic: the 2020 White Paper’s zonal proposal was withdrawn after the Conservatives lost the previously safe seat of Chesham & Amersham in a June 2021 by-election widely attributed to planning-reform backlash.

Planning reform in England (research briefing) — House of Commons Library, briefing CBP-8981 (2021–22)

Official government/regulator reportReported via secondary source

Existence and the White Paper’s withdrawal, referenced across independent secondary coverage; the specific briefing document was not independently opened this session.

Automatic permission in growth zones needs a credible replacement for the funding that discretionary Section 106/CIL negotiations currently raise — liberalisation without a funding mechanism risks under-provided infrastructure.

Planning for the Future: the fiscal case for a new Infrastructure Levy — Anthony Breach, Centre for Cities (2020)

Think-tank modellingOpened & read

Confirms the existing system (Section 106/CIL) raised roughly £7bn nationally in 2018/19, and that a credible successor levy is needed under a zonal system — see costing below.

Cost, and how it could be funded

No independently verified government fiscal costing of full zonal reform exists. The one credible modelled estimate is of a proposed replacement infrastructure levy, not of the reform’s net cost or benefit to the Exchequer.

£93bn–£116bn (levy revenue, modelled)

Independently modelled (think tank / academic)

2020 prices; modelled against 1.7–2.1 million homes

A 20% levy on suburban development value uplift, as proposed alongside the 2020 White Paper, modelled to raise this range for infrastructure — versus roughly £7bn/year raised nationally via the existing Section 106/CIL system in 2018/19. This is Centre for Cities’ own modelling of a proposed levy design, not an independent government costing of the reform itself.

Response to the Planning White Paper: the case for an Infrastructure Levy — Anthony Breach, Centre for Cities (2020)

Think-tank modellingOpened & read

Models a 20% development-value levy raising £93–116bn against 1.7–2.1m homes, versus £7bn from the current system in 2018/19.

Funding route: This option is a deregulatory reform, not a spending programme — it does not itself need funding. Its live fiscal question is the reverse: what replaces the Section 106/CIL revenue discretionary planning currently extracts, addressed by proposals like the Infrastructure Levy above.

Where and when this has been proposed or debated before

17 March 2004 (Kate Barker, commissioned by Chancellor Gordon Brown)
Barker Review of Housing Supply — recommended simplifying and speeding up planning permission, a Planning Gain Supplement, and a Regional Planning Executive, to close the gap between UK and EU-average house-price growth (needing roughly 70,000–120,000 extra homes/year in England, depending on the target).
29 October 2018 (Sir Oliver Letwin MP)
Letwin Review of Build Out Rates — found the binding constraint on large sites was the "market absorption rate" (developers won’t build faster than they can sell without depressing local prices), not planning delay or land banking; recommended greater product diversity rather than zoning reform.
The Letwin Review of Build Out Rates: a strong diagnosis, but where next? — Civitas (summary of the primary review) (2018)
Institutional reportOpened & read
Summarises Letwin’s findings: 15.5-year median build-out on sites of 1,500+ units, driven by sales-absorption rate rather than planning delay or land banking.
Published 6 August 2020; shelved 2021–22
"Planning for the Future" White Paper proposed a Growth/Renewal/Protected zonal system; withdrawn after political backlash.
Enacted 26 December 2023; not commenced as of writing
Street votes legislated via the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, in force from 26 December 2023 — but implementing regulations were never made, and the current government has not confirmed it will proceed. Law on the books, not yet operative.

Option 2 of 6

Green belt review ("grey belt" release)

Release targeted, lower-quality green belt land for housing — not blanket abolition

What it is

The green belt is a planning designation restricting development around cities, dating to 1955. "Grey belt" — formalised in the December 2024 National Planning Policy Framework — targets release of the lowest-quality green belt land: previously-developed sites, or land that does not strongly serve the belt’s stated purposes (checking sprawl, preventing towns merging, preserving setting), especially near existing rail stations, rather than releasing green belt land generally.

Who champions it

Labour government

Grey belt concept floated at 2023 conference; formalised in the Dec 2024 NPPF and Feb 2025 guidance, led by Deputy PM Angela Rayner.

Centre for Cities

Proposed releasing green belt within 800m of over 1,000 commuter rail stations for 2m+ homes — five years before "grey belt" became government policy.

Evidence for

Green belt land within 800m of an existing commuter rail station could hold over 2 million homes — and current policy pushes development to "leapfrog" further out into car-dependent locations instead, increasing sprawl rather than preventing it.

Homes on the Right Tracks: Greening the Green Belt to Solve the Housing Crisis — Paul Cheshire & Boyana Buyuklieva, Centre for Cities (2019)

Think-tank modellingOpened & read

Modelled capacity for over 2 million homes within 800m of 1,000+ existing rail stations, released ahead of and prefiguring the 2024 grey belt policy.

Evidence against / risks

In the ten months to December 2025, 83% of London green belt planning appeals were granted on grey belt grounds — against a roughly 40% historical decade-average approval rate — and developers are reported to be applying the "grey belt" label to greenfield and farmland sites, not only the car parks and disused land the policy was framed around.

Green Belt is now Grey Belt — CPRE & London Green Belt Council (2025)

Institutional reportOpened & read

Finds 83% of London and 84% of national green belt appeals Feb–Dec 2025 approved on grey-belt grounds, against a ~40% historical baseline; argues the definition is being applied more loosely than intended. An advocacy body opposed to green belt release, so read alongside that stated position.

Parliament’s own Built Environment Committee has said the grey belt policy is having "only a marginal impact at best."

Built Environment Committee correspondence/evidence on grey belt policy — House of Lords Built Environment Committee (2025)

Official government/regulator reportReported via secondary source

The quoted assessment is reported via search results; the committee’s own page returned a fetch error this session and was not independently opened.

Cost, and how it could be funded

No independently verified MHCLG impact assessment of grey belt policy’s aggregate infrastructure or Exchequer cost exists. The clearest verified fiscal mechanism is not a spending cost at all, but a change to compensation rules for compulsory purchase.

Not reliably quantifiable

n/a

The "Golden Rules" attached to grey belt release (affordable housing 15 percentage points above local policy, up to a 50% cap; new/improved infrastructure and green space) impose real costs on individual sites, but no aggregate national costing of the policy has been independently verified.

Grey belt: national planning policy implementation, "Golden Rules" — MHCLG (2025)

Government statementReported via secondary source

Golden Rules requirements confirmed via secondary industry coverage; the primary gov.uk guidance page was not independently opened this session.

Funding route: The direct fiscal lever here is not raising money but reducing land-assembly cost: the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 lets acquiring authorities direct that compulsory-purchase compensation disregard "hope value" (the uplift from anticipated future planning permission) for housing, education or health schemes — landowners are compensated closer to existing-use value, reducing what public bodies must pay to assemble sites, subject to a 10-year delivery safeguard.

Where and when this has been proposed or debated before

1947–1955
Green belt policy created by the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 framework, formalised nationally via Duncan Sandys’s 1955 circular.
2004
Barker Review discussed land supply and green belt tension but did not propose tiered release.
22 September 2019
Centre for Cities’ "Homes on the Right Tracks" — direct precursor to grey belt policy.
Labour Party Conference, 2023
Grey belt concept first floated publicly.
NPPF final 12 December 2024; guidance 27 February 2025
Revised NPPF formalising grey belt and the Golden Rules; MHCLG planning practice guidance followed.
Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023
Hope-value compensation reform enacted.
Compulsory purchase compensation: power to remove hope value — MHCLG / gov.uk guidance (2023)
Legislation / official recordOpened & read
Confirms the power for acquiring authorities to direct compensation disregard hope value for housing/education/health schemes, subject to a 10-year delivery safeguard.

Option 3 of 6

Large-scale social/council housebuilding

A state-led building programme, on the model of the post-war council-housing drive or a new "New Towns" programme

What it is

Direct construction of homes for social or "affordable" rent, funded by central government grant to councils and housing associations rather than left to private developers responding to market incentives. Contemporary versions pair this with entirely new settlements (a "New Towns" programme), echoing the post-war model.

Who champions it

Shelter

Campaigns for 90,000 social rent homes/year by 2029.

National Housing Federation

Lobbies for higher grant rates; modelling suggests housing associations could deliver 82% more homes over 10 years at grant rates of £800/home/year.

New Towns Taskforce

Independent panel chaired by Sir Michael Lyons, appointed by MHCLG September 2024, reported 28 September 2025 with 44 recommendations and 12 candidate locations.

Labour government, 2024–

The Social and Affordable Homes Programme (SAHP), 2026–2036, £39bn, targeting 300,000 affordable homes (60% social rent) — MHCLG describes it as the biggest council housebuilding programme since the post-war boom ended in the early 1980s.

Historically, both parties

The Attlee government (Labour, 1945–51) and successive Conservative governments (1951–64) both ran large council-housebuilding programmes.

Evidence for

Delivering 90,000 social rent homes/year is modelled to add £51.2bn to the economy over 30 years, pay for itself within three years, and let the Exchequer recoup its investment within just over a decade — one year of delivery estimated at £19.3bn in combined savings and tax income, including £4.5bn in housing benefit savings and £5.2bn in NHS savings.

The Economic Impact of Building Social Housing — Cebr, commissioned by Shelter and the National Housing Federation (2024)

Advocacy-commissioned modellingOpened & read

Commissioned economic-impact modelling by both campaigning organisations — the underlying assumptions were not independently audited by a neutral body, so this is presented as advocacy-commissioned modelling, not independent academic literature.

Land-use and supply constraints are the primary long-run driver of unaffordability in constrained cities including London; social/public housing is one of the policy tools reviewed as a targeted response, distinct from broad-based demand subsidies that get capitalised into prices.

Housing Policy and Affordable Housing — Christian A. L. Hilber & Olivier Schöni, LSE — Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance (2022)

Peer-reviewedOpened & read

Reviews the international evidence: land-use/supply constraints are the primary long-run driver of unaffordability in constrained ("superstar") cities including London; demand-side subsidies in such markets tend to be substantially capitalised into higher prices, offsetting the intended affordability gain.

Evidence against / risks

Government itself has declined to endorse any total cost figure for the New Towns programme, since no locations had been confirmed when a £48bn estimate circulated: "any hypothetical cost projections … are at this stage pure speculation."

MHCLG statement on New Towns costings — MHCLG spokesperson, quoted via departmental media blog (2025)

Government statementOpened & read

Direct government quote disowning the £48bn New Towns estimate as speculative, since no sites had been chosen.

Large state building programmes have historically faced construction-sector capacity constraints, and council housebuilding fell sharply after the 1980 Right to Buy and subsequent grant cuts — evidence that political and fiscal commitment to this model has not been durable across administrations.

New Towns Taskforce — construction capacity commentary — New Civil Engineer (trade press) (2025)

Institutional reportReported via secondary source

Reported capacity-constraint warnings to the Taskforce; not independently opened this session.

Cost, and how it could be funded

The only robust, official costing is the Social and Affordable Homes Programme itself. A New Towns programme has no reliable government costing — only a disowned private estimate.

£39bn

Official costing (NAO / OBR / HMRC / gov.uk)

2026–2036 (10-year programme)

Targets 300,000 affordable homes over 10 years, 60% (180,000) for social rent. Confirmed allocation: £9.58bn to 33 Strategic Partners outside London; over £16bn unallocated outside London; roughly £5bn unallocated in London; up to £11.7bn for London overall (the GLA offering "at least £6bn"), plus £46m over three years for a council-skills "Capacity to Build" programme. If the full £39bn were solely construction grant this implies roughly £130,000/home — our own arithmetic from the two verified figures, not a government-stated unit cost.

The Social and Affordable Homes Programme and the reinvigoration of council housebuilding — MHCLG (2026)

Official government/regulator reportOpened & read

Official policy paper confirming the £39bn total, its allocation, and the 300,000-home/60%-social-rent target.

£48bn (disowned estimate; not government policy)

Not reliably quantifiable

Undated, per-town range £3.5–4bn

The only figure in circulation for a 12-town New Towns programme (>120,000 homes/town) comes from WPI Strategy, a private consultancy report handed to — not produced by — the Taskforce. Government has explicitly declined to endorse it. Treat as an unofficial third-party estimate only.

New Towns costing (unofficial) — WPI Strategy (private consultancy) (2025)

Think-tank modellingReported via secondary source

The £48bn figure is reported via the same MHCLG statement disowning it; the WPI Strategy report itself was not independently opened.

Funding route: This is the most direct “spending programme” among the six options — it competes for grant funding on the same terms as the wider funding-mechanism catalog below. Trade-off: independent analysis finds that ring-fencing the entire £39bn SAHP for social rent alone would deliver only around 25,000–30,000 social rent homes/year against Shelter’s 90,000/year ask, and hitting the government’s own 300,000-all-social-rent figure would need roughly £800m/year more than currently allocated over the programme’s life — illustrating that scaling this option up is a real, costed trade-off, not a free relabelling of existing spend.

Realistic ways to fund this specific option

Borrowing (gilt issuance) ↓VAT increase ↓Wealth tax ↓Closing tax loopholes / reducing the tax gap ↓Reallocating spending from other budget areas ↓

Where and when this has been proposed or debated before

1945–1951
Attlee government built just over 1 million new homes by 1951 under Housing Minister Aneurin Bevan, 806,857 of them (about 80%) council houses, plus 156,623 prefabs.
1980 onward
Council housebuilding was the dominant delivery model until the 1980 Housing Act (Right to Buy) and subsequent grant cuts shifted delivery toward housing associations and private developers.
September 2024 – September 2025
New Towns Taskforce commissioned and reported.
June 2025 Spending Review
Social and Affordable Homes Programme announced.
Q3 2025
Independent analysis of SAHP delivery against social-rent ambitions.
Housing Outlook Q3 2025 — Resolution Foundation (2025)
Institutional reportOpened & read
Estimates that ring-fencing the full £39bn SAHP for social rent would deliver roughly 25,000 homes/year against a 30,000/year ambition — funding is tight against stated delivery goals.

Option 4 of 6

Land value taxation

Tax the unimproved value of land itself, not the buildings on it — potentially replacing council tax, stamp duty and business rates

What it is

A tax on the value of land alone, excluding what is built on it. Because the supply of land is fixed, the standard economic case is that the tax cannot be "passed on" by reducing supply the way a tax on income or transactions can, and it penalises land-banking relative to a broad property tax. Proposals range from converging business rates toward a land-value base, to a full proportional property tax replacing council tax and stamp duty.

Who champions it

Andy Burnham (Prime Minister from 20 July 2026)

A long-standing personal advocate since his 2010 Labour leadership bid, aligned with the Fairer Share campaign’s proportional-property-tax model. As PM he ruled out near-term action on 27 July 2026: "It’s just not the case that we are bringing forward plans on that scale at this moment in time." This is a personal position, not enacted or currently planned government policy.

IPPR

"Pulling down the ladder" (2021) argues for scrapping council tax (still based on 1991 valuations) and stamp duty for a proportional property tax.

Resolution Foundation

Recommends business rates converge toward a land-value base by exempting new construction/improvements from the tax base.

Land Value Tax Campaign

Long-standing single-issue advocacy in the Henry George tradition.

Liberal Democrats and Greens

Both parties have historically backed LVT variants in their platforms.

Evidence for

A land-tax-convergence design for business rates — exempting new construction and improvements from the tax base — is recommended as part of a wider, costed tax-reform package.

Tax planning: how to match higher taxes with better taxes — Molly Broome, Adam Corlett & Greg Thwaites, Resolution Foundation (Economy 2030 Inquiry) (2023)

Institutional reportOpened & read

Recommends business rates converge toward a land-value base; describes current council tax as "highly regressive" given flat within-band bills and 1991-era valuations. The land-tax element is one part of a wider package costed at roughly 1% of GDP in combined revenue-neutral effect — that 1% figure covers the whole package, not the land-tax element alone.

The standard economic case for land taxation — fixed supply, so no distortion of quantity supplied — is treated as well-established in the tax-economics literature, including the Mirrlees Review’s recommendation of it as part of a comprehensive tax redesign.

The taxation of land and property (Mirrlees Review) — Institute for Fiscal Studies (Mirrlees Review, launched 2010, published by Oxford University Press) (2010–2011)

Peer-reviewedReported via secondary source

Widely cited as recommending land value taxation as part of a comprehensive tax redesign. Its existence and headline recommendation are confirmed via independent secondary sources; the primary chapter text could not be opened this session (repeated fetch failures on ifs.org.uk), so no specific figure from it is quoted on this page.

Evidence against / risks

A move to current-value property taxation creates real winners and losers: owners of currently under-taxed high-value homes (disproportionately London and the South East) would see higher bills — a friction visible in Burnham’s own retreat from near-term implementation as Prime Minister despite years of personal advocacy.

Pulling down the ladder: The case for a proportional property tax — Shreya Nanda, IPPR (2021)

Think-tank modellingOpened & read

Advocates the reform while acknowledging it redistributes the tax burden toward higher-value, disproportionately London/South-East property — conceding the political friction this creates.

Separating "land value" from "improvement value" at scale — especially in dense urban areas with few recent land-only sales — is a long-standing practical objection to land value taxation.

Land value taxation: valuation practicality — Cross-referenced across multiple secondary commentaries (Various)

Institutional reportReported via secondary source

A recurring objection in the literature; not independently confirmed against one primary source this session.

Cost, and how it could be funded

No independently verified, government-commissioned costing (OBR, MHCLG impact assessment) of a UK-wide land value tax exists. Available figures are campaign-group or think-tank modelling that disagree with each other on rate, base and yield — the one funding lever on this page without a solid nationwide costing.

0.48% (main homes) / 0.96% (second/empty/overseas-owned homes) — OR separately quoted as a flat 0.5% levy raising "up to £35.5bn/year"

Advocacy-commissioned modelling

Undated campaign modelling

These two figures, both attributed to the Fairer Share campaign across different secondary sources, were not confirmed as describing the same modelled scenario — stated here as a genuine, unresolved discrepancy rather than picked between. Neither has been independently audited by a government body.

Proportional Property Tax proposal — Fairer Share campaign (Undated)

Advocacy-commissioned modellingReported via secondary source

Campaign-commissioned modelling, cross-confirmed across multiple secondary sources but not independently opened at the primary site this session; the two cited figures were not reconciled.

~1.97% rate → ~£6.4bn (London only)

Independently modelled (think tank / academic)

London-specific illustrative estimate

The only sub-national figure found with a stated methodology — illustrative, London-only, and not a national costing.

London land value capture / LVT illustrative estimates — Cross-referenced Bath/GLA estimates (Various)

Think-tank modellingReported via secondary source

London-only illustrative modelling; no equivalent nationwide figure with a comparable methodology was found.

Funding route: Land value taxation is itself a revenue-raising mechanism, not a programme needing funding — in principle it could fund some of the spending options above rather than needing a funding route of its own. Its practical constraint is political and administrative (valuation, transition losers), not fiscal design. Council tax revaluation and a proportional property tax (catalog below) are the closest complementary reforms, taxing the same underlying property/land wealth via a different mechanism.

Realistic ways to fund this specific option

Council tax revaluation / proportional property tax ↓

Where and when this has been proposed or debated before

Launched November 2010
Mirrlees Review recommended land value taxation as part of a comprehensive tax redesign.
17 September 2021
"Pulling down the ladder" published.
28 June 2023
"Tax planning" (Economy 2030 Inquiry) published.
2010; renewed May–July 2026
Andy Burnham’s public advocacy dates to his 2010 Labour leadership bid; renewed publicly, with his team "reportedly examining proposals" from Fairer Share.
27 July 2026
Burnham as Prime Minister explicitly rules out near-term council tax replacement.
Burnham rules out imminent council tax reform — Housing Organisation Association (HOA) news report (2026)
Institutional reportOpened & read
Direct quote confirming Burnham as PM ruled out bringing forward council-tax-replacement plans "at this moment in time."

Option 5 of 6

Demand-side subsidies for buyers

Help to Buy-style equity loans or mortgage guarantees that reduce the deposit or credit constraint facing buyers

What it is

Government-backed equity loans or mortgage guarantees that let buyers purchase with a smaller cash deposit or a larger mortgage than a lender would otherwise approve — without directly increasing the supply of homes.

Who champions it

Conservative governments, 2013–2023

Launched by Chancellor George Osborne in the 2013 Budget; continued and later wound down under successive Conservative chancellors.

Housebuilders and some mortgage lenders

Have supported successor or permanent mortgage-guarantee proposals since Help to Buy’s 2023 closure.

Evidence for

The Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee, in its periodic reviews, concluded the mortgage guarantee scheme "does not appear to have been a material driver" of house price growth and posed no material financial-stability risk.

Financial Policy Committee letters on the Help to Buy mortgage guarantee scheme — Bank of England (2015–2016)

Official government/regulator reportReported via secondary source

FPC conclusions confirmed via gov.uk news coverage of the letters; the primary letter PDFs were not individually opened this session.

Evidence against / risks

Affordability gains were concentrated among higher-income households; the mortgage guarantee strand had "very limited" effect on the maximum affordable price for most non-homeowners, and the equity loan scheme mainly helped buyers who could likely have bought anyway a little later, rather than expanding homeownership to new groups.

Who is helped by "Help to Buy" schemes? (IFS findings, relayed) — Institute for Fiscal Studies, reported by Mortgage Solutions (2026)

Peer-reviewedReported via secondary source

IFS’s own page could not be opened (repeated 403 errors); its findings are relayed here via directly-opened trade-press coverage, which should be read as IFS-attributed rather than IFS-verbatim.

In supply-constrained markets, demand-side subsidies tend to be substantially capitalised into higher prices, offsetting the intended affordability gain.

Housing Policy and Affordable Housing — Christian A. L. Hilber & Olivier Schöni, LSE — Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance (2022)

Peer-reviewedOpened & read

Cost, and how it could be funded

The Help to Buy equity loan scheme’s cost is officially audited by the National Audit Office — but the NAO itself, at two separate reviews six years apart, explicitly declined to confirm the scheme delivered value for money.

£518m loaned in first nine months; £3.7bn tied up long-term; £494m estimated net cost "in today’s terms"

Official costing (NAO / OBR / HMRC / gov.uk)

To December 2013

The Department projected recoupment of £4.8bn over roughly 15 years, contingent on assumptions about how many equity-loan sales actually caused new homes to be built — which the Department had not itself quantified at the time. NAO: "cannot say at this stage … whether the scheme will provide value for money."

The Help to Buy equity loan scheme — National Audit Office (2015)

Official government/regulator reportOpened & read

First formal NAO audit of the scheme; confirms the cost figures above and the explicit non-confirmation of value for money.

~£29bn loaned by March 2023; 462,000 purchases

Official costing (NAO / OBR / HMRC / gov.uk)

Cumulative to scheme closure, 2023

By this later review the Department was "forecasting a positive return on its investment," but the NAO reiterated it "cannot say whether the scheme has delivered value for money" pending long-term market performance and full loan recovery, warning "the taxpayer could lose out significantly" if property values fell.

Help to Buy: Equity Loan scheme – progress review — National Audit Office (2019)

Official government/regulator reportOpened & read

Second NAO review, six years after the first; confirms scale-to-date and repeats the non-confirmation of value for money.

Funding route: This option redirects public money toward supporting private purchases rather than building homes directly — it competes for the same funding as the spending options above, with the added complication that its "cost" is a loan book whose eventual net loss or gain depends on future house prices, not a fixed grant.

Realistic ways to fund this specific option

Borrowing (gilt issuance) ↓Reallocating spending from other budget areas ↓

Where and when this has been proposed or debated before

March 2013, Chancellor George Osborne
Announced in the Budget as part of a wider £5.4bn housing package — an equity-loan scheme plus a separate mortgage-guarantee scheme.
2013–2023
Equity loan scheme ran with changing eligibility and price caps (e.g. restricted to first-time buyers with lower caps from 2021), wound down completely.
2024
Successor "permanent mortgage guarantee" proposals discussed by IFS researchers given Help to Buy’s wind-down.

Option 6 of 6

Rent regulation

Legal limits on rent increases — from strict caps to "second-generation" inflation-linked, tribunal-assessed models

What it is

Legal restrictions on how much or how often landlords can raise rents. First-generation controls are strict caps; "second-generation" models allow some increases (inflation-linked, or assessed by a tribunal) while limiting large jumps, usually paired with security-of-tenure reform.

Who champions it

Scottish Government (SNP)

Introduced a national rent cap via the Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) (Scotland) Act 2022.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan

Repeatedly requested devolved rent-control powers, most recently under the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill; refused by ministers when the Bill became law in May 2026.

Green Party, Generation Rent, some Labour-left figures

Advocate caps stronger than the Renters’ Rights Act delivers.

Opposed by: Institute of Economic Affairs, most mainstream academic economists, landlord bodies (e.g. NRLA)

See the economist survey and systematic review below.

Evidence for

A 1994 expansion of San Francisco rent control increased renters’ probability of staying at their address by nearly 20% in the short run and reduced displacement — the clearest rigorously identified evidence that rent control protects existing, incumbent tenants.

The Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants, Landlords, and Inequality: Evidence from San Francisco — Rebecca Diamond, Timothy McQuade & Franklin Qian — American Economic Review 109(9) / NBER Working Paper 24181 (2019 (NBER WP 2018))

Peer-reviewedOpened & read

Rigorous natural-experiment design; finds a ~20% increase in probability of staying at the controlled address, and reduced displacement, for tenants covered by the expansion.

The Scottish Government maintains that its rent-control measures "struck a proportionate balance between the protection of tenants and the rights of landlords."

Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) (Scotland) Act 2022 — research briefing — Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe) (2023)

Official government/regulator reportOpened & read

Confirms the government’s stated position defending the measures as proportionate, alongside the Act’s detailed timeline (see prior discussion below).

Evidence against / risks

The same San Francisco rent-control expansion caused landlords to reduce rental housing supply by 15% — via conversion to owner-occupation and redevelopment — which in turn drove a city-wide rent increase of 5.1%: the policy protected incumbents at the cost of raising rents for everyone else, including future renters.

The Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants, Landlords, and Inequality: Evidence from San Francisco — Diamond, McQuade & Qian — as above (2019)

Peer-reviewedOpened & read

The same paper as the "for" citation — its central finding is genuinely two-sided: protection for sitting tenants, offset by reduced supply and higher rents overall.

A systematic review of 206 studies (1967–2024) across 8 outcome domains found rent controls do lower the controlled rent in most studies (56/65), but a majority of studies also found reduced rental supply (12/16), reduced new construction (11/16), declining housing quality (15/20, none found improvement), worsened misallocation (14/14), and higher rents in the uncontrolled sector (14/17).

Rent Control: Does it work? — Konstantin A. Kholodilin, Institute of Economic Affairs (2024)

Institutional reportOpened & read

Academic-authored systematic review, published/hosted by the IEA — an advocacy-aligned think tank opposed to rent control — so read the framing alongside the publisher, even though the underlying study count and methodology are independently described.

Surveyed on whether rent control has had a positive impact on the amount and quality of affordable rental housing, top US economists overwhelmingly disagreed: of 38 panelists, 30 (79%) disagreed or strongly disagreed, 1 agreed, 3 were uncertain.

Rent Control (IGM Forum economist panel survey) — Kent Clark Center, University of Chicago Booth (2012)

Institutional reportOpened & read

A US survey (framed around New York/San Francisco), not UK-specific — shown as the clearest evidence of mainstream economist consensus on the general policy, not on the UK context specifically.

Independent academic reviewers (commissioned by a landlord body, but assessing the international literature on its own terms) concluded there is "as close to a consensus as economic research can realistically get" that rent controls reduce supply, construction and quality, and worsen mobility — while still recommending the UK, which they describe as sitting at "one extreme" of having almost no regulation, adopt indefinite tenancies and rent stabilisation rather than a hard freeze.

Assessing the evidence on rent control from an international perspective — Christine Whitehead & Peter Williams, LSE, for the Residential Landlords Association (2018)

Institutional reportReported via secondary source

Independent academic authors, commissioned by a landlord-representative body; their own recommendation is more moderate (tenancy stabilisation) than a simple "against" reading would suggest.

Cost, and how it could be funded

Rent control is a regulatory intervention, not a spending programme — it carries no direct Exchequer cost the way a grant or subsidy does, and no robust UK study was found quantifying its net fiscal effect (housing-benefit savings against any downstream homelessness or temporary-accommodation cost).

Not reliably quantifiable

n/a

No direct Exchequer cost; no robust UK costing of net fiscal effect was found in this research pass.

n/a — absence of a costed study is the finding — n/a (n/a)

Institutional reportReported via secondary source

Recorded to make the absence of a costing explicit and traceable, per this page’s discipline against silently omitting a funding-route field.

Funding route: Not applicable — rent control does not require public spending to implement, so it is not a competitor for the funding mechanisms below in the way the other five options are.

Where and when this has been proposed or debated before

Passed 3–6 October 2022
Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) (Scotland) Act 2022: rent increases capped at 0% from commencement, raised to 3% from April 2023 (with landlord appeal to Rent Service Scotland for up to 6% to cover specific documented costs); social-housing cap removed after a voluntary 5.07% agreement for 2023/24; extended in stages.
Cost of Living (Tenant Protection) (Scotland) Act 2022 — research briefing — Scottish Parliament Information Centre (2023)
Official government/regulator reportOpened & read
Confirms the detailed cap timeline and appeal mechanism above.
Royal Assent 27 October 2025
Renters’ Rights Act 2025 (England): abolishes Section 21 no-fault evictions and assured shorthold tenancies; requires two months’ notice for any rent increase; gives tenants the right to challenge increases at the First-tier Tribunal, which sets an "open market rent." This is a rent-increase-challenge and procedural framework — it does not set a numerical ceiling the way the Scottish Act does, an important distinction from a true rent cap.
Renters’ Rights Act 2025 — UK Parliament / legislation.gov.uk (2025)
Legislation / official recordOpened & read
Confirms Royal Assent date and the tribunal-challenge mechanism, distinct from a numerical rent cap.
Reported May 2026
Mayor Sadiq Khan’s request for devolved rent-control powers for London refused when the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill became law.
Introduced 2020; struck down 25 March 2021
Berlin’s Mietendeckel (2020 state-level rent cap) struck down by Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court for lack of legislative competence, with landlords able to reclaim capped rent retrospectively; the milder, national Mietpreisbremse ("rent brake") remains in force.

If it costs money

31 ways to pay for it

Two of the six options above cost real public money at scale (large-scale social housebuilding, and demand-side subsidies); the planning and green belt reforms carry smaller, more indirect costs via infrastructure and compensation. Rent regulation needs no funding at all, and land value taxation raises money rather than spending it. The full menu below is not limited to the handful of levers most often named in this debate (VAT, spending reallocation, wealth tax, closing loopholes, quantitative easing, borrowing) — it also covers income tax and National Insurance, property and wealth taxes beyond LVT, business and environmental levies, and welfare and spending-side reform, because a genuinely honest comparison should not pretend only six mechanisms exist. 3 of the six options above link down to the specific handful of mechanisms actually realistic for funding them, rather than every mechanism being listed against every option.

Every mechanism carries its own real, sourced scale and trade-offs — none is presented as free, and where no robust costing exists that is stated plainly rather than invented.

Income and work

Closing tax loopholes / reducing the tax gap

More aggressive HMRC compliance activity, e-invoicing, and closing specific avoidance routes (e.g. VAT registration threshold "bunching," partnership NI treatment).

Real, sourced scale

£59.2bn total gap (6.4% of theoretical liabilities), but only ~£2–4bn/year realistically recoverable at the margin

Official costing (NAO / OBR / HMRC / gov.uk)

2024–25 (HMRC edition); Resolution Foundation costing, Sept 2025

HMRC’s official tax gap: £59.2bn/6.4% for 2024–25, up from £46.8bn/5.3% the prior year; small businesses account for 62% of the total. But the theoretical gap is not the recoverable amount — Resolution Foundation’s own costed policy (reversing the small-business Corporation Tax gap trend, which trebled in real terms from £5bn to £15bn between 2018–19 and 2023–24) puts realistic recovery at roughly £2bn/year, plus a further £2bn/year by 2029–30 from cutting the VAT registration threshold from £90,000 to £30,000. Government’s own Autumn Budget 2025 measures targeted roughly £10bn/year by 2029–30 from tax-gap closing overall (about £7.5bn/year specifically from loophole-closing) — already earmarked against existing fiscal targets, so redirecting it to housing would be a real trade-off against other committed uses, not new money.

Measuring tax gaps 2026 edition — HMRC (2026)

Official statisticsOpened & read

Official 2024–25 tax gap: £59.2bn, 6.4% of theoretical liabilities; small businesses 62% of the total.

Trade-offs and evidence

Both HMRC and independent analysts frame the total tax gap as not fully recoverable — a floor of fraud, error and insolvency will always exist — which is why a specific, realistic policy (e.g. £2bn/year from the Corporation Tax gap trend) is costed separately from the full theoretical gap.

Call of duties: Revenue and reform for Autumn Budget 2025 — Adam Corlett, Resolution Foundation (2025)

Institutional reportOpened & read

Explicitly costs a realistic policy (£2bn/year) rather than the theoretical maximum, illustrating the "not fully recoverable" principle directly.

Where and when discussed before

Annual
HMRC "Measuring tax gaps" published annually each June.
September 2025 ("Call of duties")
Resolution Foundation pre-Budget costings.
November 2025
Autumn Budget 2025 tax-gap measures.

Pension tax relief restriction

Restricting income tax relief on pension contributions — currently given at the saver’s marginal rate — to a single flat rate, most commonly proposed at the basic rate (20%) or a flat 30%.

Real, sourced scale

~£15bn/year long-run (restrict to basic rate, 20%) — OR a separately-cited £22bn (2029–30) "before behavioural responses"; ~£3bn/year (flat 30% rate, smaller reform)

Independently modelled (think tank / academic)

Long-run steady state; £22bn figure dated 2029–30

These two headline figures for the basic-rate-only reform (£15bn long-run vs £22bn by 2029–30) come from different methodologies and vintages and were not reconciled — shown as a genuine disagreement rather than resolved by picking one. IFS’s own framing: total pension tax and NIC relief cost £52.5bn in 2023–24 (HMRC), and more than half of that goes to upper- and additional-rate taxpayers, which is the case for reform. Restricting relief to the basic rate would fall "almost all" on the top 20% of earners.

Reforms to pensions taxation — Institute for Fiscal Studies (2023–24)

Institutional reportReported via secondary source

IFS’s costed reform proposals and the £52.5bn HMRC relief-cost baseline; ifs.org.uk blocked automated fetching of the specific article on this pass, so this is relayed rather than independently re-opened.

Trade-offs and evidence

A flat-rate relief structure is simpler to administer than the current marginal-rate system, but reduces the incentive to save for higher earners specifically, which is the core of the political resistance to it.

Reforms to pensions taxation — Institute for Fiscal Studies (2023–24)

Institutional reportReported via secondary source

General framing of the administrative-simplicity-versus-incentive trade-off in IFS’s pensions taxation work.

Where and when discussed before

Recurring, 2010s–present
Repeatedly proposed and repeatedly shelved at successive Budgets since the early 2010s — no government has yet implemented a flat-rate reform.

Income tax rate/threshold changes and fiscal drag

Either legislate a rate rise (a penny on the basic, higher or additional rate), or extend the freeze on the Personal Allowance and higher-rate threshold in cash terms while wages rise — "fiscal drag" — which has been the mechanism actually used repeatedly since 2021, needs no new rate legislation, and pulls more taxpayers into higher bands each year.

Real, sourced scale

1p on the basic rate: +£6.9bn (2026–27) rising to £8.2bn (2028–29); the existing personal-allowance freeze already extended to April 2031, raising a further £12.4bn/year by 2030–31

Official costing (NAO / OBR / HMRC / gov.uk)

HMRC ready reckoner, June 2025; HMT Budget 2025 Table 4.1

The freeze itself was separately costed by the OBR at £29.3bn a year (1.0% of GDP) by 2027–28 before this latest extension. Resolution Foundation estimates a basic-rate employee loses £140/year and a higher-rate worker a further £280 from a shorter, 2-year extension alone — politically attractive because it needs no rate legislation, but it bites hardest on middle earners newly crossing the higher-rate threshold rather than the very top of the distribution.

Direct effects of illustrative tax changes bulletin; Budget 2025, Table 4.1 — HMRC; HM Treasury (2025)

Official statisticsOpened & read

HMRC ready reckoner for rate changes; HM Treasury’s own Budget 2025 document (downloaded and read directly) for the freeze-extension costing, row 46.

Trade-offs and evidence

Under the extended freeze, the typical earner’s effective tax rate (including employer NI) is projected to reach roughly 28% by 2029–30 — still slightly below the 2007–08 pre-crisis level of 29%, so not historically extreme in aggregate, but concentrated on middle earners crossing thresholds rather than spread evenly.

Call of duties: Revenue and reform for Autumn Budget 2025 — Adam Corlett, Resolution Foundation (2025)

Institutional reportOpened & read

Directly fetched; effective-tax-rate modelling and the £140/£280 per-worker cost of a freeze extension.

Where and when discussed before

Spring Budget 2021
Threshold freeze first legislated.
Autumn Statement 2022; Spring Budget 2023; Autumn Budget 2025
Freeze extended twice more, most recently to April 2031.

Employee National Insurance changes

Raising the main (12%) or additional (2%) employee National Insurance rate, or extending it to a higher earnings band — narrower than income tax because it stops at State Pension age and does not apply to rental, dividend or savings income.

Real, sourced scale

1p on the main rate: +£5.35bn (2026–27) to +£5.4bn (2028–29); 1p on the additional rate: +£2.0bn/year

Official costing (NAO / OBR / HMRC / gov.uk)

HMRC ready reckoner, June 2025

Because employee NI misses pensioners, landlords and investors entirely, Resolution Foundation has instead proposed a revenue-neutral-for-employees swap — a 2p income tax rise paired with a 2p employee NI cut — estimated to raise £6bn/year purely by broadening the effective tax base to groups who don’t pay employee NI, while leaving employees’ own take-home pay unchanged.

Direct effects of illustrative tax changes bulletin — HMRC (2025)

Official statisticsOpened & read

Confirms the 1p-rate ready-reckoner figures for both the main and additional employee NI rates.

Trade-offs and evidence

Employee NI was cut twice recently — 12% to 10% (January 2024) and 10% to 8% (April 2024) — the reverse direction to any housing-funding rise, illustrating how politically sensitive this specific rate has proven in both directions.

National Insurance Contributions (NICs) — Office for Budget Responsibility (2026)

Official statisticsOpened & read

Confirms the recent employee NI rate-cut history.

Where and when discussed before

Autumn Statement 2023 (effective Jan 2024); Spring Budget 2024 (effective April 2024)
Employee main NI rate cut 12%→10%, then 10%→8%.

Employer National Insurance changes

Raising the employer (secondary) National Insurance rate or lowering the threshold at which it starts — the April 2025 rise (13.8% to 15%, threshold cut from £9,100 to £5,000) is a live, fully-scored precedent for a further change.

Real, sourced scale

The April 2025 rise: £28.5bn static yield (2025–26) rising to £31.2bn (2029–30) before behavioural effects; £16.1bn net yield by 2029–30 after them

Official costing (NAO / OBR / HMRC / gov.uk)

OBR supplementary costing, May 2025; OBR EFO, October 2024

This is the single most heavily scrutinised incidence assumption in current UK fiscal policy. The OBR’s own words: "In 2025-26... we assume firms pass on 60 per cent of the higher costs to workers and consumers, via lower wages and higher prices, leaving 40 per cent to be absorbed by the employer in lower post-tax profits. Further adjustment... from 2026-27 onwards... 76 per cent of the total cost is passed through lower real wages, leaving 24 per cent... to affect profits." The OBR also estimates the measure reduces labour supply by roughly 0.2% (about 50,000 full-time-equivalent) by 2029–30.

Static costing of changes to Employer National Insurance Contributions; Economic and Fiscal Outlook, October 2024, para 3.11 — Office for Budget Responsibility (2024–2025)

Official statisticsOpened & read

Both the static costing table and the incidence-assumption paragraph were downloaded and read directly.

Trade-offs and evidence

A further 1p on the employer rate would raise a similar order of magnitude again (roughly £11.2bn/year on HMRC’s ready reckoner) — but the same pass-through mechanics apply, so most of any further rise should be expected to show up as lower real wages and higher prices, not lower employer profits.

Direct effects of illustrative tax changes bulletin — HMRC (2025)

Official statisticsOpened & read

Ready-reckoner figure for a further 1p employer-rate rise.

Where and when discussed before

Autumn Budget 2024 (30 October); effective 6 April 2025
Employer NI rise announced and made effective.

Dividend tax treatment

Raising dividend tax rates or cutting the dividend allowance (already reduced from £5,000 to £500 since 2016). Autumn Budget 2025 raised the ordinary and upper dividend rates by 2 percentage points each, effective April 2026.

Real, sourced scale

+£280m (2026–27) rising to £1.39bn (2030–31) from the Autumn Budget 2025 rise; a further, targeted rise to the basic dividend rate alone (16.5%) is separately estimated to raise £1.5bn

Official costing (NAO / OBR / HMRC / gov.uk)

HMT Budget 2025 Table 4.1; Resolution Foundation proposal

Dividend income is unusually elastic to rate changes: Resolution Foundation notes that "the timing and amount of dividends is carefully managed each year" by business owners, who can defer, accelerate or reclassify extractions in response to an announced rate change — more so than PAYE income. Higher- and additional-rate dividend income, once corporation tax is stacked on top, already approaches parity with wage taxation (up to ~54.5% combined); it is specifically the comparatively low basic rate that Resolution Foundation’s further-rise proposal targets.

Budget 2025: Strong foundations, secure future, Table 4.1 — HM Treasury (2025)

Official statisticsOpened & read

Row 50 of the official Budget costing table, downloaded and read directly.

Trade-offs and evidence

The behavioural elasticity of dividend timing means a static costing is more likely to overstate the true revenue than for PAYE income, where timing cannot be managed in the same way.

Call of duties: Revenue and reform for Autumn Budget 2025 — Resolution Foundation (2025)

Institutional reportOpened & read

States the dividend-timing elasticity point directly.

Where and when discussed before

2016–2024
Dividend allowance progressively cut from £5,000 to £500.
Autumn Budget 2025, effective April 2026
Ordinary and upper dividend rates each raised by 2 percentage points.

Property (rental) income tax treatment

Further restricting how landlords are taxed — mortgage-interest relief is already capped at the basic rate for individual landlords (Section 24, phased in 2017–2020); live further options include a distinct, higher property-income tax rate (legislated for 2027) and the recent abolition of Furnished Holiday Lettings tax treatment.

Real, sourced scale

Section 24: £665m/year (2018–19); new property-income rate bands (2pp above equivalent income tax rates, from April 2027): £445m/year by 2030–31

Official costing (NAO / OBR / HMRC / gov.uk)

2018–19 outturn; 2030–31 forecast

Government’s own assessment of Section 24 judged only a marginal effect on housing demand and rents, given "the small overall proportion of the housing market affected," and found "approximately 1 in 5 individual landlords" received less relief. Resolution Foundation’s assessment of a further rental-income rise directly counters the common "landlord tax rises just get passed to rents" claim: "the main expected economic impact... would be slightly lower house prices and slightly higher home ownership, with any impact on rents being small," arguing landlords who exit can primarily only sell to tenants, producing offsetting demand and supply effects — this should be presented as a contested claim, not a settled one.

Restricting finance cost relief for individual landlords; Budget 2025, Table 4.1 — HMRC; HM Treasury (2015–2025)

Official statisticsOpened & read

Official Tax Information and Impact Note for Section 24; new property-income rate costing from Budget 2025 Table 4.1, row 49.

Trade-offs and evidence

The Mirrlees Review’s original case for restricting landlord interest deductibility argued rental property received an asymmetric subsidy to borrowing relative to owner-occupiers, who lost mortgage-interest relief entirely by 2000, and recommended moving landlords toward a rate-of-return-allowance system rather than full deductibility.

Tax by Design (Mirrlees Review), Chapter 16: The Taxation of Land and Property — Stuart Adam et al., Institute for Fiscal Studies (2011)

Peer-reviewedOpened & read

The intellectual foundation for the direction Section 24 later took, four years before it was legislated.

Where and when discussed before

Summer Budget 2015; phased 2017–2020
Section 24 announced, then phased in.
Announced Spring Budget 2024, effective April 2025
Furnished Holiday Lettings tax regime abolished.
Autumn Budget 2025, effective April 2027
New property-income tax rate bands legislated.

ISA and pension tax-shelter caps

Restricting the tax relief attached to ISAs or pension contributions — either capping allowances directly, or narrowing the National Insurance exemption on salary-sacrifice pension contributions, which Autumn Budget 2025 has already legislated.

Real, sourced scale

Salary-sacrifice pension NIC cap: £4.85bn (2029–30); combined pension tax and NIC relief currently totals £55.4bn/year; a parallel cash-ISA cap raises essentially nothing as scored

Official costing (NAO / OBR / HMRC / gov.uk)

2024–25 relief baseline; 2029–30 costing

IFS’s own independent assessment of the salary-sacrifice reform calls it "one of the largest revenue-raising measures in the Budget," concentrated on the top earnings decile, but concludes "not clear this reform improves overall design of how pensions are taxed" — it narrows one arbitrary distinction (salary sacrifice versus ordinary contributions) while leaving the larger one untouched (employer pension contributions are never subject to NIC at all), and recommends scrapping that exemption entirely instead. The parallel cash-ISA cap (£20,000 to £12,000 for under-65s, within an unchanged £20,000 total ISA envelope) is scored as a small NET COST, not a revenue-raiser, because ISA income is already tax-free and the costing does not assume savers move into taxable accounts at scale — flagged explicitly as "not reliably quantifiable as a revenue-raiser" as currently designed.

Assessing the announced reform to salary sacrifice pension contributions; Tax relief statistics; Budget 2025, Table 4.1 — Laurence O’Brien & Matthew Oulton, Institute for Fiscal Studies; HMRC; HM Treasury (2026)

Peer-reviewedOpened & read

IFS’s independent assessment (£4.7bn/£2.6bn estimate, close to the official £4.85bn/£2.6bn costing); HMRC relief-statistics baseline; Budget 2025 Table 4.1 rows 52 and 79 for the cap and cash-ISA costings.

Trade-offs and evidence

Public support for the cash-ISA cut was low — only 12% of the public supported cutting the £20,000 cash-ISA allowance versus 48% opposed — and the Commons Treasury Select Committee had urged the government to keep the £20,000 limit, arguing a cut would incentivise few savers to switch into stocks and shares.

Cash ISA cap: public and committee reaction — Cross-referenced survey and Treasury Select Committee reporting (2025)

Official government/regulator reportReported via secondary source

Reaction figures relayed via a research pass; not independently re-opened as a single primary document this session.

Where and when discussed before

Autumn Budget 2025 (26 November)
Both the salary-sacrifice NIC cap and the cash-ISA cap legislated.
13 May 2026
IFS independent assessment published, ahead of the 2029 implementation date.

Wealth and property

Wealth tax

Either a one-off levy on net wealth above a threshold, an annual tax on wealth, or a minimum effective tax rate on the very wealthiest. This site covers wealth tax options in full elsewhere (see the "Untapped revenue" page) — summarised here for the funding-mechanism comparison.

Real, sourced scale

£146bn (one-off, £1m/person threshold, 1% annualised) or £260bn (£500k/person threshold)

Independently modelled (think tank / academic)

2020 prices, net of an assumed 10% non-compliance/admin cost

The Wealth Tax Commission’s central recommendation is a one-off levy, not an annual tax, precisely because a one-off, backward-dated charge is far harder to avoid — the Commission itself takes no view on which rate or threshold government should choose.

Wealth Tax Commission Final Report / FAQ — Arun Advani, Emma Chamberlain & Andy Summers (LSE/Warwick) (2020)

Institutional reportOpened & read

One-off wealth tax modelling: £500k/person threshold at 1%/year over 5 years → at least £260bn; £1m/person threshold → £146bn. An annual wealth tax to raise ~£10bn/year gross would need roughly 1.12% above £10m or 0.57% above £2m — explicitly "roughly equivalent to adding 2p to the basic rate of income tax or 2p to VAT."

£10.4bn (2026), rising to ~£18bn by 2036

Independently modelled (think tank / academic)

2% minimum effective tax on households with over £100m

A newer (July 2026) minimum-tax design — closing the gap where effective rates fall for the ultra-wealthy, affecting fewer than 1,000 UK households — rather than a standard annual wealth tax.

Minimum tax on the richest households — Dr Ben Tippet (King’s College London) & Prof. Gabriel Zucman (Paris School of Economics / UC Berkeley) (2026)

Peer-reviewedOpened & read

A 2% minimum effective wealth-tax rate on households over £100m (fewer than 1,000 UK households), income tax already paid deducted from the liability.

Trade-offs and evidence

Behavioural response/avoidance is the central design risk for an annual tax (an estimated 7–17% of the tax base lost to behavioural response at a 1% rate), largely eliminated for a one-off tax by design; liquidity constraints affect roughly 7% of those liable under an annual tax with no relief mechanism.

Wealth Tax Commission Final Report — Advani, Chamberlain & Summers (2020)

Institutional reportOpened & read

States the Commission’s own avoidance/liquidity risk estimates for the annual design, and why they favour a one-off tax instead.

Where and when discussed before

2020
Wealth Tax Commission established and reported (LSE/Warwick, ESRC/CAGE-funded).
2021 (Advani et al.)
Fiscal Studies journal article on revenue/distributional modelling for a UK wealth tax.
21 July 2026
KCL/Zucman minimum-tax proposal.

Capital gains tax reform

Aligning CGT rates with income tax rates while reforming the base — more generous deductions for purchase costs and losses, removing the CGT "uplift" that forgives gains at death, and scrapping Business Asset Disposal Relief. No CGT is currently charged on main homes, pension funds or ISAs.

Real, sourced scale

~£15bn/year raised currently; HMRC scores a 1pp higher-rate rise at just £100m (2027–28), and a 10pp rise as REDUCING revenue by ~£2bn that year

Official costing (NAO / OBR / HMRC / gov.uk)

Baseline 2024; HMRC costing basis 2027–28

CGT is highly concentrated: paid by ~350,000 people (0.65% of adults), with 3% of CGT taxpayers (~12,000 people, average gain £4m) accounting for two-thirds of revenue. IFS’s own view is that HMRC’s static costing isn’t a reliable long-run guide, but the honest headline — shown here rather than picked around — is that a simple rate rise alone faces steep diminishing, even negative, returns on HMRC’s own numbers. IFS’s actual recommendation is the base-reform package described above, not a rate rise in isolation.

Capital gains tax reform — Stuart Adam, Arun Advani, Helen Miller & Andy Summers — IFS Green Budget 2024, ch.7 (IFS/CenTax/Warwick/LSE) (2024)

Institutional reportOpened & read

Directly fetched and read (pages 1–5): baseline revenue and concentration figures, HMRC’s own rate-change costings, and the package-not-rate-rise recommendation.

Trade-offs and evidence

Higher CGT rates increase the incentive to emigrate before realising a gain; the standard international mitigant IFS points to is "deemed disposal on departure" paired with "rebasing on arrival" for new residents.

Capital gains tax reform — IFS Green Budget 2024, ch.7 (2024)

Institutional reportOpened & read

States the emigration-timing risk and the deemed-disposal/rebasing mitigant used internationally.

Where and when discussed before

October 2024
IFS Green Budget chapter setting out the reform package.
2024
Liberal Democrat 2024 manifesto costed a narrower CGT band reform at £5.2bn/year by 2028–29, hypothecated to the NHS — a different, smaller design from IFS’s full-alignment package.

Inheritance tax reform (agricultural & business property relief)

Restricting Agricultural Property Relief and Business Property Relief, which currently let qualifying farms and businesses pass through inheritance largely or wholly tax-free. Unlike every other mechanism on this page, this one is already legislated, not merely proposed.

Real, sourced scale

£520m/year from the APR/BPR curtailment alone; part of a wider £2.3bn/year IHT package by 2029–30

Official costing (NAO / OBR / HMRC / gov.uk)

Autumn Budget 2024; in force from April 2026

The first £1m of combined agricultural and business property keeps 100% relief; above that, relief is cut to 50%. Roughly 1,800 estates a year currently claim agricultural relief; around 500 (29%) are forecast to pay more under the new rules.

Agricultural property relief and business property relief reforms (research briefing CBP-10181) — House of Commons Library (2025)

Official government/regulator reportReported via secondary source

Confirms the £1m combined threshold, the 50% relief above it, and the estate/revenue figures; the specific briefing page was reported via search rather than independently re-opened here.

Trade-offs and evidence

IFS is broadly supportive of the reform on the general-principle grounds that special treatment for agricultural and business property arbitrarily favours certain asset types over others, all else equal.

IFS commentary on APR/BPR reform — Institute for Fiscal Studies (2024–25)

Institutional reportReported via secondary source

IFS’s general position on asset-neutral taxation, relayed via the same research pass that verified the Commons Library figures; not independently re-opened here.

Where and when discussed before

30 October 2024
Announced in the Autumn Budget.
April 2026
Takes effect.

Council tax revaluation / proportional property tax

Either revaluing council tax bands to current property values (still based on 1991 valuations in England), or replacing council tax and stamp duty entirely with a single proportional property tax charged as a percentage of current value.

Real, sourced scale

Revaluation alone: broadly revenue-neutral, redistributing the existing take (bills fall >20% across most of the North and Midlands, rise in London and high-value commuter areas)

Independently modelled (think tank / academic)

Illustrative, undated modelling

This is IFS’s own independent distributional finding, not a net-revenue-raising one — revaluation on its own is designed to redistribute the existing council tax take, not raise new money. Do not present it as a funding source for new spending unless it is explicitly paired with a rate change.

Council tax revaluation analysis — Institute for Fiscal Studies (Undated modelling)

Institutional reportReported via secondary source

IFS’s regional distributional findings for a revaluation exercise, relayed via a peer research pass rather than independently re-opened here.

£5.6bn/year net surplus claimed (funding a £556/year cut for ~19m, 77%, of households)

Advocacy-commissioned modelling

Undated campaign modelling

A flat 0.48% annual charge on current property value, replacing both council tax and stamp duty. This is Fairer Share’s own costing, not independently verified by IFS, OBR or any government body — treat as "not independently verified" per this page’s standard, not as a confirmed net revenue figure.

Proportional Property Tax proposal — Fairer Share campaign (Undated)

Advocacy-commissioned modellingReported via secondary source

Campaign-commissioned costing; not independently opened or verified against a primary methodology document in this research pass.

Trade-offs and evidence

Any move to current-value property taxation creates concentrated regional losers (London and high-value commuter areas) alongside broad-based winners (most of the North and Midlands) — a real political constraint independent of whichever specific design is chosen.

Council tax revaluation analysis — Institute for Fiscal Studies (Undated)

Institutional reportReported via secondary source

Same distributional finding as above, framed as the central political constraint on any revaluation-based reform.

Where and when discussed before

1993–present
English council tax bands have not been revalued since their introduction, based on 1 April 1991 property values.
Ongoing campaign, undated
Fairer Share campaign’s Proportional Property Tax proposal published.

Land value tax, as a funding source for other options

The land value taxation option above is treated in full there as a housing-supply lever in its own right; this entry covers it purely as a potential funding source for the other, spending-side options on this page — e.g. could LVT revenue help fund large-scale social housebuilding, rather than only reforming how land itself is taxed.

Real, sourced scale

London-only: a 1.97% rate on London land value ≈ revenue comparable to Corporation Tax plus Stamp Duty combined in London (~£6.4bn)

Independently modelled (think tank / academic)

Illustrative, undated

No single authoritative UK-wide LVT revenue costing exists — confirmed independently by two separate research passes for this page. This London-only figure is the only sub-national estimate found with a stated methodology; it should not be scaled up to a national figure without a stated basis for doing so.

Estimation of Land Value Tax Revenues in London — University of Bath / Greater London Authority (Undated)

Institutional reportReported via secondary source

London-specific illustrative LVT revenue modelling; relayed via a peer research pass, not independently re-opened here.

Administrative running cost ~£300m–£1bn/year (steady state), plus a larger one-off cost for a full national land revaluation

Independently modelled (think tank / academic)

General estimate, undated

An implementation-cost estimate distinct from the revenue figure above — relevant because it reduces net yield, and because the one-off revaluation cost would need funding before any LVT revenue arrives.

Land value tax administrative cost estimate — Cross-referenced general estimate (Undated)

Institutional reportReported via secondary source

General administrative-cost estimate for a national land revaluation exercise; not independently confirmed against one primary source.

Trade-offs and evidence

The Mirrlees Review’s efficiency case for LVT (fixed land supply means no distortion of quantity supplied) is well established in the tax-economics literature without endorsing any specific rate or threshold — a national costing requires that political choice to be made first.

The taxation of land and property (Mirrlees Review) — Institute for Fiscal Studies (Mirrlees Review, launched 2010, published by Oxford University Press) (2010–2011)

Peer-reviewedReported via secondary source

Where and when discussed before

Undated
Bath/GLA London LVT revenue estimate.
Launched November 2010
Mirrlees Review recommended LVT in principle as part of a comprehensive tax redesign.

Business and environment

Corporation tax rate vs. "full expensing"

Raising the main corporation tax rate (25% since April 2023) directly raises revenue but is argued to blunt investment incentives. "Full expensing" — a 100% first-year allowance on qualifying plant and machinery, made permanent from April 2026 after starting as a temporary 2023 measure — does the opposite: it costs the Exchequer money specifically to encourage investment. A housing programme could be funded by a CT rise, scaling back full expensing, or both, each with a different investment trade-off.

Real, sourced scale

£3.6bn (2026–27) rising to £4.0bn (2028–29) per 1pp on the main rate; full expensing itself costs "over £10bn a year" (HM Treasury’s own description)

Official costing (NAO / OBR / HMRC / gov.uk)

HMRC ready reckoner, 2025; HMT Autumn Statement 2023

Full expensing is described by HM Treasury itself as "the biggest business tax cut in modern British history." A separate OBR paper on full expensing’s specific £8.3bn/£1.8bn cost breakdown could not be opened this session (PDF rendering failure) and is not quoted here as verified — only the £10bn+/year HMT headline is shown, since that source was directly read.

Direct effects of illustrative tax changes bulletin; Autumn Statement 2023 — HMRC; HM Treasury (2023–2025)

Official statisticsOpened & read

HMRC ready reckoner for 1pp CT changes; HMT’s own Autumn Statement 2023 text describing full expensing’s scale, directly read.

Trade-offs and evidence

Making full expensing permanent (rather than temporary) is estimated to raise total business investment by £14bn over the OBR’s forecast period (~£3bn/year, ~1.2% on average) — near-term investment is actually £11bn lower, medium-term £25bn higher, a smoothing rather than a pure net-gain effect.

The impact of corporation tax changes on business investment — Office for Budget Responsibility, Economic and Fiscal Outlook Box 2.4 (2023)

Official government/regulator reportOpened & read

Directly fetched OBR box quantifying the investment effect of making full expensing permanent.

Where and when discussed before

Spring Budget 2023 (15 March), CT rise effective April 2023
Full expensing introduced as a temporary measure alongside the CT rise from 19% to 25%.
Autumn Statement, 22 November 2023
Full expensing made permanent.

Windfall / sector-specific levies (Energy Profits Levy)

A tax on "excess" profits in a specific sector during a price shock — the Energy Profits Levy on oil & gas "ring fence" profits (introduced May 2022, now 38%, combining with standard ring-fence tax for a 78% effective headline rate), and the parallel Electricity Generator Levy on low-carbon generators’ excess revenues.

Real, sourced scale

£2.9bn (EPL) + £0.7bn (EGL) in 2024/25; total oil & gas tax receipts forecast at £2.7bn for 2025–26

Official costing (NAO / OBR / HMRC / gov.uk)

2024/25 outturn; 2025–26 OBR forecast

Total oil and gas receipts peaked at £9.9bn in 2022–23 during the price shock and have fallen sharply since as gas prices normalised — the levy’s yield is highly sensitive to the commodity-price cycle it was designed to tax, not a stable, repeatable revenue source at the peak-year scale.

Taxation of North Sea oil and gas (research briefing SN00341) — Antony Seely & Matthew Keep, House of Commons Library (2026)

Official government/regulator reportOpened & read

Confirms EPL £2.9bn and EGL £0.7bn for 2024/25, and the receipts history/forecast; cross-checked against OBR’s own oil-and-gas revenues page.

Trade-offs and evidence

The industry body Offshore Energies UK argues reforming (softening) the levy would raise an extra £15–15.7bn over ten years via higher investment, payroll and corporation tax — an industry-lobby claim, not independently verified, and shown here labelled as such rather than as a neutral estimate.

Energy Profits Levy reform analysis — Offshore Energies UK (industry body) (2025)

Institutional reportReported via secondary source

Industry-lobby claim, found via search but not independently opened or verified this session.

Where and when discussed before

26 May 2022
EPL introduced in response to the 2022 energy-price shock.
Autumn Statement 2022 (17 Nov) and Autumn Budget 2024 (30 Oct)
EPL rate raised to 38% and extended to March 2030; introduced alongside the EGL.

Bank levy / bank corporation tax surcharge

The bank levy taxes UK banks’ and building societies’ balance-sheet liabilities (since 2011); the bank surcharge is an additional corporation tax charge on bank profits (2015, cut from 8% to 3% in 2023 alongside the main CT rise, giving banks a combined 28% rate).

Real, sourced scale

£1.4bn (bank levy, 2025–26 forecast); surcharge receipts projected to have declined to roughly £500m/year after the 2023 rate cut

Official costing (NAO / OBR / HMRC / gov.uk)

2025–26 (levy); post-2023 projection (surcharge)

Bank levy receipts peaked at £3.4bn in 2015–16 and have fallen since as rates were repeatedly cut to offset the separate main-rate CT rise — HM Treasury’s own 2021 reasoning was that without the surcharge cut, the CT rise to 25% "would make UK taxation of banks uncompetitive" against the US and EU.

Bank levy (tax-by-tax); Taxation of banking (research briefing SN05251) — Office for Budget Responsibility; Antony Seely, House of Commons Library (2022–2026)

Official statisticsOpened & read

OBR’s current bank levy forecast, cross-checked against the Commons Library briefing’s historical levy/surcharge receipts and HMT’s own competitiveness rationale for the 2021 surcharge cut.

Trade-offs and evidence

The TUC has proposed raising the surcharge back toward 8% (an estimated ~£8bn over four years) or as high as 35% (~£50bn over four years) to bring bank taxation closer to the Energy Profits Levy’s scale — a contested figure from a campaigning body, not independently verified this session.

Bank taxation reform proposal — Trades Union Congress (2025)

Institutional reportReported via secondary source

TUC’s own report page returned a fetch error this session; figures relayed via search corroboration only.

Where and when discussed before

2011 onward
Bank levy introduced, repeatedly recalibrated 2011–2015 to hold revenue near a £2.5bn target.
Summer Budget 2015
Bank surcharge introduced at 8%.
Autumn Budget 2021, effective April 2023
Surcharge cut to 3% to offset the main CT rise to 25%.

Financial transaction tax

The UK already levies a 0.5% Stamp Duty Reserve Tax on electronic share purchases plus paper Stamp Duty on share transfers; proposals for a much broader financial transaction tax would extend this logic to bonds, derivatives or currency trades (the "Robin Hood Tax" campaign; a stalled EU-wide FTT proposal).

Real, sourced scale

£3.05bn (SDRT) + £1.27bn (Stamp Duty on shares) in 2024–25, up from £2.3bn + £0.9bn the prior year

Official costing (NAO / OBR / HMRC / gov.uk)

2024–25 outturn

HMRC is replacing both taxes with a single self-assessed "Securities Transfer Tax" from 2027 — explicitly a modernisation and administrative reform, not a rate change, and reported as "not expected to raise any extra revenue." A broader FTT extending to bonds/derivatives/currency has no UK government costing; the EU’s own FTT proposal, stalled since 2013, was signalled for formal withdrawal in the European Commission’s 2026 work programme.

UK Stamp Tax Statistics 2023 to 2024 commentary — HMRC (2024)

Official statisticsOpened & read

Confirms SDRT and Stamp Duty on shares receipts for 2023–24 and 2024–25.

Trade-offs and evidence

The IMF’s own review of the evidence found the UK’s existing 0.5% stamp duty reduces trading volume (elasticity −0.5 to −1.7) with ambiguous effects on volatility, and separately cites research estimating that abolishing UK stamp duty entirely would raise share prices by 7.2% and cut the cost of capital by 66–80 basis points — the standard liquidity/cost-of-capital argument against extending, rather than removing, transaction taxes.

Taxing Financial Transactions: Issues and Evidence — Thornton Matheson, IMF Working Paper WP/11/54 (2011)

Working paper — not peer-reviewedOpened & read

IMF review of international FTT evidence, including UK stamp duty’s effects on trading volume and cost of capital.

Where and when discussed before

10 February 2010
"Robin Hood Tax" UK campaign launched by a coalition of over 50 charities and trade unions.
Proposed February 2013; withdrawal signalled October 2025
EU FTT formally proposed under "enhanced cooperation" by 11 member states; stalled since, and signalled for formal withdrawal in the European Commission’s 2026 work programme.

Carbon pricing / UK ETS extension

The UK Emissions Trading Scheme auctions emissions allowances to power, industrial and aviation sectors (about 25% of UK territorial emissions), with revenue going to general government funds rather than being earmarked. Proposals exist to extend coverage to heating and road transport, following the EU’s ETS2.

Real, sourced scale

£2.6bn raised in 2024–25; £17.8bn total auction revenue 2021–2025

Official costing (NAO / OBR / HMRC / gov.uk)

2024–25 (annual); 2021–2025 (cumulative)

No UK government costing exists for extending the scheme to buildings or road transport — the National Audit Office confirms DESNZ has not produced a revenue estimate, only that it has informally examined how other jurisdictions cover heating and road transport. State this as "not reliably quantifiable" from official UK sources rather than inventing a figure.

The UK Emissions Trading Scheme — National Audit Office (2025)

Official government/regulator reportOpened & read

Confirms cumulative and annual auction revenue, current sector coverage, and the absence of a DESNZ costing for extension.

Up to 0.62% of GDP (independent modelling of a heating + road transport extension at £80/tCO2)

Independently modelled (think tank / academic)

Modelled scenario, 2024

The only credible external modelling found for an extension, since no government figure exists. Heating shows stronger emissions-reduction potential than road transport, which already carries fuel duty; the authors stress recycling revenue back to households/firms significantly increases the economic benefit ("double dividend") and recommend pairing any extension with fuel-poverty measures.

Extending the UK Emissions Trading Scheme to heating and road transport fuels — Danial Sturge, Josh Burke, Esin Serin, Leo Mercer & Aurélien Saussay, LSE Grantham Research Institute (2024)

Institutional reportOpened & read

Models two carbon-price scenarios for an ETS extension; the higher (£80/tCO2) scenario yields up to 0.62% of GDP.

Trade-offs and evidence

UK ETS receipts quadrupled between 2020–21 and 2022–23 as carbon prices rose, then fell back as the price dropped to £35/tCO2 in 2024 — illustrating that, like the windfall levies above, this revenue stream is genuinely price-cycle-dependent rather than a stable base to plan a long-term spending commitment against.

Emissions trading scheme (UK ETS) — Office for Budget Responsibility (2026)

Official statisticsOpened & read

Confirms the receipts history and its sensitivity to the carbon price.

Where and when discussed before

1 January 2021
UK ETS launched, replacing UK participation in the EU ETS after Brexit.
Autumn Statement 2023; maritime 2026, waste 2028
Extension to domestic maritime and energy-from-waste confirmed.
May 2025
Government announced intent to work toward linking the UK ETS with the EU ETS.

Consumption, welfare and spending

VAT increase

Raising the standard VAT rate (currently 20%) by one percentage point or more, or removing a zero-rating or relief.

Real, sourced scale

£8.8bn (2026–27), rising to £9.55bn by 2028–29

Official costing (NAO / OBR / HMRC / gov.uk)

HMRC ready reckoner, June 2025 update

The official HMRC "ready reckoner" figure for a 1 percentage point rise in the standard rate. An earlier ready-reckoner vintage (cited independently, 2022–23 basis) put the same 1pp rise at roughly £6.7bn — both figures are shown because the gap illustrates how much a "per point" costing moves between fiscal years as the VAT base grows; neither supersedes the other, they are simply different years.

Direct effects of illustrative tax changes bulletin — HMRC (National Statistics) (2025)

Official statisticsOpened & read

Official HMRC ready reckoner: 1pp on standard-rate VAT raises £8.8bn (2026–27), £9.2bn (2027–28), £9.55bn (2028–29).

Trade-offs and evidence

VAT is mildly progressive when measured against lifetime expenditure, but the bottom income decile pays a distinctly higher share of current income in VAT than other deciles — the regressivity debate depends entirely on which of the two measures is used.

Green Budget: "Myth 2: VAT is a regressive form of taxation" — Institute for Fiscal Studies (2009 (methodology repeated in later Green Budgets))

Institutional reportOpened & read

Finds VAT roughly proportional/mildly progressive against lifetime expenditure, but regressive against current income for the poorest decile.

Modelling a VAT-financed fiscal consolidation found the negative GDP effect would be twice as large at its peak as an equivalent non-inflationary tax rise, because VAT directly raises the price level while inflation is already above target — risking the Bank of England’s credibility if it is seen not to "look through" the shock. Labour’s 2024 manifesto pledge not to raise VAT, income tax or National Insurance rates further narrows the Chancellor’s options.

Green Budget 2025 — Institute for Fiscal Studies, with Citi and Barclays (2025)

Institutional reportOpened & read

Models a VAT-led consolidation scenario finding roughly double the peak GDP hit of an equivalent non-inflationary tax rise, given current above-target inflation.

Where and when discussed before

2009 onward, repeated annually
VAT regressivity debate addressed directly in IFS Green Budget chapters.
IFS Green Budget, October 2025
VAT-inflation interaction modelled in detail.
Ongoing
HMRC ready reckoner bulletins published each Budget cycle.

Reallocating spending from other budget areas

Cutting or freezing budgets in unprotected departments to redirect resource or capital spending toward housing.

Real, sourced scale

~£14bn (departmental efficiency target); £2bn (central admin cuts)

Official costing (NAO / OBR / HMRC / gov.uk)

By 2028–29, per June 2025 Spending Review

The 2025 Spending Review required departments to find at least 5% "savings and efficiencies" by 2028–29 — almost £14bn in total (£9bn from the NHS alone) plus £2bn from cutting central administration budgets. This is already committed against existing spending plans, not available as new money for housing.

Green Budget 2025 — Institute for Fiscal Studies (2025)

Institutional reportOpened & read

Confirms the Spending Review efficiency targets and notes government spending plans assume 1.0%/year public-sector productivity growth (versus a 0.2%/year long-run average, 1997–2019) simply to deliver existing commitments — i.e., little genuine slack exists without reopening the Spending Review.

Trade-offs and evidence

Reallocation is always a zero-sum trade-off requiring an explicit political choice about which department loses; historically NHS, defence and aid have been "protected," pushing disproportionate cuts onto justice, local government and further education. Under 2018 plans, for example, protecting those three implied cuts of £14.6–14.8bn (3.1%/year) to unprotected departments by 2022–23 — shown here as methodology/framing from an earlier cycle, not a current-year figure.

Trade-offs for the forthcoming Spending Review (Green Budget ch.4) — Institute for Fiscal Studies (2018)

Institutional reportOpened & read

A 2018-vintage document, cited only for its methodology and framing of reallocation as always producing an explicit named loser — its figures are not current.

Where and when discussed before

Annual, e.g. 2018 ch.4, 2024, 2025
IFS Green Budget series addresses reallocation trade-offs annually.
June 2025
2025 Spending Review itself set the current efficiency targets.

Fuel duty escalator restoration

Reversing the 5p/litre cut in place since March 2022 and applying the RPI-linked rises that have been budgeted for, then cancelled, at every fiscal event since 2011.

Real, sourced scale

£4.8bn by 2028–29 (full indexation restored, vs continued freeze)

Official costing (NAO / OBR / HMRC / gov.uk)

OBR March 2024 EFO

OBR treats this as a recurring forecast risk rather than a live policy — the "planned" rise has been cancelled at every Budget since 2011 — and states a continued freeze "would remove almost half" of the government’s fiscal headroom against its debt-falling target.

Economic and Fiscal Outlook – March 2024 — Office for Budget Responsibility (2024)

Official statisticsOpened & read

States the £4.8bn-by-2028–29 indexation figure and its recurring "policy risk" framing.

Trade-offs and evidence

Regressivity is contested: the impact falls disproportionately on rural and lower-income drivers who depend on cars, but is sometimes framed as progressive relative to car ownership itself, which skews toward higher-income households.

Fuel duty freeze distributional analysis — Cross-referenced distributional modelling (e.g. PolicyEngine) (Various)

Think-tank modellingReported via secondary source

General distributional framing of the freeze/escalator debate; not independently opened as a single primary source this session.

Where and when discussed before

2011 onward
Fuel duty frozen or cut at every Budget since the escalator was formally scrapped.
March 2022; extended to March 2025 and March 2026
5p/litre cut introduced, then repeatedly extended.

Sin and health levies (sugar, gambling, tobacco, alcohol)

Duties on goods and activities associated with health or social harm — the Soft Drinks Industry Levy, gambling duties, tobacco duty and alcohol duty — with proposals to raise rates, extend coverage, or lower thresholds.

Real, sourced scale

SDIL £327m; gambling duties £4bn (rising to £810m–£1.16bn/year extra from 2026–27 reforms); tobacco £8bn; alcohol £11.9bn

Official costing (NAO / OBR / HMRC / gov.uk)

2024–25/2025–26 mixed, per duty — see note

Four genuinely different revenue streams and trends: the sugar levy (£327m, 2024–25, provisional) is falling as reformulation succeeds — its own design goal — limiting further revenue growth from it specifically; gambling duty is being reformed at Autumn Budget 2025 (Remote Gaming Duty 21%→40% from April 2026), OBR/HMT-certified to add £810m rising to £1.16bn/year by 2030/31 on top of the existing £4bn baseline; tobacco duty (£8bn) is falling as consumption and vaping substitution reduce the base; alcohol duty (£11.9bn) followed a 2023 reform cutting rate bands from 15 to 6.

Betting and gaming duties; Alcohol duties (tax-by-tax); Soft Drinks Industry Levy statistics — Office for Budget Responsibility; HMRC (2025–2026)

Official statisticsOpened & read

OBR duty-by-duty baseline figures directly confirmed; the gambling-reform £810m–£1.16bn figure and SDIL trend are corroborated via Budget 2025 policy costings and gov.uk statistics respectively.

Trade-offs and evidence

Sin taxes are regressive on a static basis (poorer households spend a larger share of income on these goods), but the SDIL’s own behavioural success — reformulation cutting average sugar content by 46% — illustrates that "raise the rate" and "raise more revenue" can pull in opposite directions once producers respond.

Soft Drinks Industry Levy statistics — HMRC / gov.uk (2025)

Official statisticsReported via secondary source

SDIL receipts and reformulation figures; the specific data tables sit in a linked spreadsheet not independently re-opened this session.

Where and when discussed before

2018
Soft Drinks Industry Levy introduced.
Legislated 13 July 2026, effective 1 January 2028
SDIL threshold lowered and extended to milk-based drinks.
Autumn Budget 2025
Gambling duty reform announced.
August 2023
Alcohol duty reform to ABV-based bands.

VAT base-broadening (removing zero-rates and exemptions)

Distinct from a rate rise: applying VAT to goods and services currently zero-rated or exempt (food, children’s clothes, domestic energy, financial services), rather than raising the 20% standard rate itself. Private school fees VAT, implemented from January 2025, is a live example already in force.

Real, sourced scale

Private school fees VAT: ~£1.5–1.7bn/year from 2025–26 (forecast, no confirmed outturn yet); full base-broadening ceiling ~£100bn/year forgone across all zero-rates and exemptions (£64bn zero/reduced rates + £33bn exemptions)

Official costing (NAO / OBR / HMRC / gov.uk)

HMT/OBR forecast basis, 2025–26; IFS ceiling estimate, undated

The £100bn figure is the theoretical ceiling if every relief were removed with no compensation — not a realistic single policy costing, and IFS’s own long-standing position (since the Mirrlees Review) is that these reliefs are a poorly-targeted way to help low-income households compared with direct cash transfers, so the honest framing is base-broadening paired with compensation, not a bare removal. The private-school-fees figure is confirmed as a forecast; no HMRC outturn for the first full year had been published as of this research.

Private school fees VAT costing; Tax and public finances: the fundamentals — HM Treasury / OBR; Institute for Fiscal Studies (2024–2025)

Official statisticsReported via secondary source

Private-school VAT forecast figures and the IFS £100bn ceiling estimate were relayed via secondary reporting; ifs.org.uk blocked direct fetches on this pass and the Mirrlees VAT chapter PDF was unreadable.

Trade-offs and evidence

Removing zero-rating without compensation is regressive in an important sense IFS itself stresses: poorer households spend a higher SHARE of their budget on zero-rated essentials like food and children’s clothes, even though better-off households spend more in absolute terms — which is why IFS pairs base-broadening with direct transfers in its own proposals rather than recommending removal alone.

Tax and public finances: the fundamentals — Institute for Fiscal Studies (Various (Mirrlees Review onward))

Institutional reportReported via secondary source

IFS’s long-standing distributional case for pairing VAT base-broadening with compensation; not independently re-opened this session.

Where and when discussed before

2011
IFS Mirrlees Review chapter on broadening the VAT base.
From 1 January 2025
VAT applied to private school fees.

Welfare taper / means-testing changes

Extending means-testing to a currently near-universal benefit, or adjusting a taper rate — reducing entitlement as income rises rather than cutting the headline rate. Winter Fuel Payment means-testing (2024) is the most direct, and most instructive, recent precedent.

Real, sourced scale

~£1.3bn (2024/25) rising to ~£1.5bn/year — but substantially reversed within a year

Official costing (NAO / OBR / HMRC / gov.uk)

2024/25 policy, reversed for 2025/26 onward

Winter Fuel Payment eligibility was restricted to Pension Credit recipients in July 2024 (recipients fell from 10.8m to 1.5m), then substantially reversed in June 2025 after political and distributional pressure — payments restored to all pensioners with income up to £35,000, with only about 2.2m of 12.3m pensioners now excluded. This is the central lesson of the precedent: a large paper saving from means-testing a previously universal benefit can prove politically unsustainable within a single year, and the reliable long-run saving is much smaller than the initial figure implied.

Winter Fuel Payment: eligibility changes and 2025 reversal — Department for Work and Pensions; House of Commons Library (CBP-10094, CBP-10973) (2024–2025)

Official statisticsReported via secondary source

DWP savings figures and the 2025 reversal, relayed via Commons Library briefings; not independently re-opened this session.

Trade-offs and evidence

The episode is the clearest recent illustration of the political/credibility risk of means-testing a previously universal benefit: high estimated savings on paper, followed by a rapid, substantial reversal once the distributional effect became visible.

Winter Fuel Payment: eligibility changes and 2025 reversal — House of Commons Library (2025)

Official government/regulator reportReported via secondary source

Same source as above; the reversal itself is the trade-off evidence.

Where and when discussed before

29 July 2024
Winter Fuel Payment means-testing announced, as part of "Fixing the foundations: public spending audit."
June 2025, effective winter 2025/26
Substantially reversed — restored to pensioners with income up to £35,000.

Triple lock variants

Uprating the state pension by whichever is highest of earnings growth, price inflation, or 2.5% (the "triple lock"), versus a single-metric alternative — earnings-only or price-only uprating. The savings from a single-metric switch could, in principle, fund other spending.

Real, sourced scale

+£15.5bn/year by 2029–30 vs earnings-only uprating; +£22.9bn/year vs price-only uprating

Official costing (NAO / OBR / HMRC / gov.uk)

OBR Fiscal risks and sustainability, July 2025

The triple lock now costs roughly three times what was originally expected when it began in 2011/12 (~£5.2bn). Over the long term (to 2073–74), it explains 1.6 percentage points of GDP of the projected 2.7-point rise in state pension spending as a share of GDP — and under elevated inflation/earnings volatility, spending could run 1.5 points of GDP higher still (roughly £43bn in 2024–25 terms) by the early 2070s.

Fiscal risks and sustainability report, July 2025 — Office for Budget Responsibility (2025)

Official statisticsOpened & read

Directly fetched; confirms both single-metric-alternative costings and the long-term GDP-share projection.

Trade-offs and evidence

OBR itself frames the triple lock as a source of unpredictable, compounding fiscal risk — its "ratchet" design permanently locks in whichever of the three metrics was highest each year, rather than reverting — while acknowledging any reform is a normative choice about protecting pensioner incomes that the OBR does not itself take a position on.

Fiscal risks and sustainability report, July 2025 — Office for Budget Responsibility (2025)

Official statisticsOpened & read

Same report; frames the ratchet mechanism and its uncertainty explicitly.

Where and when discussed before

2011/12
Triple lock introduced.
Ongoing
Scored annually in every OBR EFO risk chapter, and biennially in the Fiscal risks and sustainability report.

Procurement / efficiency reform

Centralising and tightening government procurement of common goods and services, on the argument that a fragmented buying process leaves realisable savings on the table.

Real, sourced scale

Not reliably quantifiable as a primary funding source — realistic new savings estimated at only ~£500m, against ~£125bn/year total relevant spend

Not reliably quantifiable

NAO, July 2024

The National Audit Office found public bodies spend roughly £125bn/year on common goods and services, but only about £25bn is routed through the centralised Crown Commercial Service framework (2022–23) — most spend bypasses the route that is supposed to deliver savings, and NAO describes procurement as "fragmented," with insufficient oversight of framework providers. A separate NAO review of Home Office/Department for Transport reported savings found roughly 17% of claimed savings were questionable — either one-off items presented as recurring, or savings already banked in prior years and double-counted. NAO and IFS commentary converge on treating headline "efficiency savings" figures announced at fiscal events as unreliable as a primary funding source.

Efficiency in government procurement of common goods and services — National Audit Office (2024)

Official government/regulator reportOpened & read

Confirms the £125bn/£25bn spend figures and the fragmentation critique; the report’s full granular savings tables were not independently extracted from the PDF this session.

Trade-offs and evidence

This is the one mechanism on this page where the honest conclusion is that the evidence itself argues against treating it as a serious funding source: NAO’s own scepticism about "claimed vs realised" savings is the central finding, not a caveat on an otherwise solid figure.

Efficiency in government procurement of common goods and services — National Audit Office (2024)

Official government/regulator reportOpened & read

Same report; its own core criticism is the trade-off.

Where and when discussed before

22 July 2024
NAO procurement efficiency report published.

Asset sales / privatisation proceeds

Selling government-held shares or other assets for a one-off cash receipt — the completed exit from NatWest (formerly RBS) is the clearest and most recent large-scale precedent.

Real, sourced scale

£35bn returned to the Exchequer (share sales, dividends and fees) against a ~£45.5bn original bailout cost — a realised LOSS of roughly £10.5bn

Official costing (NAO / OBR / HMRC / gov.uk)

2008 bailout to completed exit, 30 May 2025

This is a one-off, non-repeatable proceeds stream — the shareholding is now fully sold, so it cannot be treated as an ongoing funding mechanism, only a historical precedent showing the achievable scale (tens of billions) and showing that a crisis-era rescue asset can be sold for well below its original cost. By contrast, the 2017 Lloyds exit was profitable, returning £900m on its £20.3bn rescue — asset-sale outcomes vary enormously by the specific asset, not a general rule either way.

Government completes exit from NatWest — UK Government Investments / HM Treasury (2025)

Government statementReported via secondary source

Figures cross-corroborated across multiple financial-press reports of the official HMT/UKGI statement; the direct gov.uk press release URL returned an error this session.

Trade-offs and evidence

The NatWest exit’s realised loss versus the Lloyds exit’s realised profit shows there is no general rule that asset sales recoup their cost — each depends on the specific asset, its purchase price, and market conditions at the time of sale, which is why this mechanism cannot be assumed to fund anything at a stated scale in advance.

Government completes exit from NatWest — UK Government Investments / HM Treasury (2025)

Government statementReported via secondary source

Same source; the NatWest/Lloyds contrast is the trade-off evidence.

Where and when discussed before

2008
2008 bank bailouts (RBS/NatWest and Lloyds) begin.
2017
Lloyds exit completed, profitably.
30 May 2025
NatWest exit completed, at a loss.

Borrowing and monetary

Quantitative easing / "printing money"

The popular framing that the Bank of England could simply create money to fund public spending directly, as distinct from what quantitative easing (QE) actually is: central-bank purchases of already-issued gilts in secondary markets, intended to lower long-term interest rates, not to hand government new spending power.

Real, sourced scale

Not a funding source — and the unwind is now a net cost: £171.9bn Treasury indemnity liability (March 2025); OBR-projected £126bn lifetime net loss on the Asset Purchase Facility

Official costing (NAO / OBR / HMRC / gov.uk)

As at 31 March 2025 (NAO); Oct 2023 OBR projection

QE purchases existing bonds from private holders — "the government does not receive any additional proceeds from the transactions" — so it is not itself a source of new spending power; this is the mainstream economic distinction from genuine "monetary financing." The Treasury received £123.9bn in QE profits from Jan 2013–Jul 2022 as rates were low, but has transferred billions back to the Bank’s Asset Purchase Facility since October 2022 as rates rose; the Treasury’s indemnity is now recognised as a £171.9bn liability on its own accounts.

HM Treasury Accounts 2024–25 — National Audit Office (2025)

Official government/regulator reportOpened & read

Confirms the Treasury’s Asset Purchase Facility indemnity is recognised as a derivative financial liability of £171.9bn at 31 March 2025.

Trade-offs and evidence

Monetary financing (direct, permanent money creation to fund spending) is technically distinct from QE (reversible purchase of existing bonds), and "economists are generally in favour of ruling out" the former because permanent money creation risks inflation — QE’s reversible design is what keeps it distinct in the mainstream view.

Quantitative easing and monetary financing: what’s the difference? — Michael McMahon (Oxford) & Corrado Macchiarelli (NIESR), Economics Observatory (2020)

Institutional reportOpened & read

Draws the precise technical distinction between QE and monetary financing, and states the mainstream economist consensus against the latter.

The OBR itself stresses that its QE cashflow accounting "is not an assessment of the overall fiscal (let alone economic) impact of the QE programme" — QE delivered real macro-stabilisation benefit during 2009–2020 and the pandemic, but the current cost of unwinding it is real, large and ongoing, funded by conventional taxation and borrowing like any other public cost.

Fiscal accounting for quantitative easing and tightening — Office for Budget Responsibility (2023)

Official government/regulator reportOpened & read

Official OBR explainer distinguishing QE’s cashflow accounting from its overall fiscal/economic impact; confirms the scale of profits (2013–2022) and losses (since Oct 2022) described above.

Where and when discussed before

2009–2021
QE first used in the UK from 2009 in response to the financial crisis; expanded through the pandemic.
From 2022
OBR began publishing recurring EFO boxes on the fiscal cost of QE/QT as Bank Rate rose.
Annual
NAO annual audit of HM Treasury Accounts records the Asset Purchase Facility indemnity each year.

Borrowing (gilt issuance)

Financing capital spending — housebuilding, infrastructure — through additional government bond (gilt) issuance, on the argument that investment spending is more "borrowing-appropriate" than day-to-day spending.

Real, sourced scale

£133bn (2025–26 forecast borrowing, 4.3% of GDP); debt 94.5% of GDP

Official costing (NAO / OBR / HMRC / gov.uk)

2025–26, falling to £59bn/1.6% of GDP by 2030–31

UK debt is the 4th highest among advanced European economies and UK borrowing costs the 3rd highest of any advanced economy (after New Zealand and Iceland). With debt near 100% of GDP, a 1 percentage point rise in gilt yields raises debt interest spending by roughly 1% of GDP (£30bn in 2024–25 terms) — debt interest is forecast at £111bn this year, £64bn higher than forecast just three years earlier, "roughly equivalent to the entire core schools budget."

Economic and Fiscal Outlook, March 2026; Fiscal Risks and Sustainability, July 2025 — Office for Budget Responsibility (2025–2026)

Official statisticsOpened & read

Confirms current borrowing/debt trajectory and international debt-cost comparison; debt-interest figures cross-confirmed via IFS Green Budget 2025.

Trade-offs and evidence

Current fiscal rules already permit borrowing for capital spending under the "investment rule" (Public Sector Net Financial Liabilities must fall as a share of GDP by 2029–30) — the live debate is not whether borrowing-to-invest is allowed in principle, but how much headroom exists against the rule, and whether a debt-only framing undercounts the value created by the investment itself.

Over-ruled? — Cara Pacitti & James Smith, Resolution Foundation (2024)

Institutional reportOpened & read

Argues a Public Sector Net Worth rule — netting off the value of assets created by investment against the debt incurred — could expand fiscal headroom from roughly £9bn to "more than £60bn," versus the £26bn needed just to reverse planned investment cuts.

Gilt market sentiment is now described as "increasingly becoming the constraint on fiscal policy," with the 2022 mini-Budget/LDI crisis cited as the reference precedent for how quickly that constraint can bind.

Green Budget 2025 — Institute for Fiscal Studies (2025)

Institutional reportOpened & read

Frames bond-market reaction as an increasingly binding real-time constraint on fiscal policy, citing the 2022 mini-Budget as precedent.

Where and when discussed before

1997 onward
Gordon Brown’s original "golden rule" (borrow only to invest, not for current spending) is the direct ancestor of today’s investment rule.
Autumn 2025, legislated February 2026
Current stability/investment rules set out in the Charter for Budget Responsibility.
4 October 2024
"Over-ruled?" published, proposing a Public Sector Net Worth rule.

Borrowing variants: targeted / green gilts

Issuing bonds earmarked for a specific purpose, with ring-fenced use-of-proceeds reporting, rather than plain undifferentiated gilts — the UK’s Green Gilt programme is the operating precedent, and a "Housing Gilt" would follow the same administrative model.

Real, sourced scale

Over £57bn raised by end of 2025–26 via the Green Financing Programme; a further £12bn planned for 2026–27

Official costing (NAO / OBR / HMRC / gov.uk)

Cumulative to 2025–26; forward plan for 2026–27

The mechanics — a Green Financing Framework with ring-fenced use-of-proceeds reporting — are proven at tens-of-billions scale, making a housing-specific analogue administratively plausible. However, the "greenium" (the discount investors accept for a green-labelled bond) on the UK’s inaugural 2021 green gilts was estimated by market analysts at only 0–2.5 basis points — "almost negligible" — so the case for a targeted bond is about earmarking and public visibility of use-of-proceeds, not measurably cheaper financing.

UK Government Green Financing Programme — UK Debt Management Office / HM Treasury (2025–2026)

Official statisticsReported via secondary source

Cumulative issuance figures triangulated across DMO Annual Review and gov.uk Debt Management Report search results; primary PDF text was not machine-readable this session.

Trade-offs and evidence

A near-negligible greenium means a targeted bond would not obviously reduce the government’s cost of borrowing relative to conventional gilts — any case for it rests on earmarking and impact reporting, not on it being cheaper money.

UK Government Green Financing Programme — UK Debt Management Office (2025)

Official statisticsReported via secondary source

Same source; the negligible-greenium finding is market-analyst-sourced rather than DMO’s own stated figure.

Where and when discussed before

2021
Inaugural UK green gilts issued.
November 2025
Green Financing Framework updated.
March 2026
Third green gilt (£6.25bn) syndicated — the first new one since October 2021.

Bank of England reserve remuneration reform

A genuinely contested proposal — not a consensus mechanism — to reduce the interest the Bank of England pays commercial banks on their reserves (or to slow quantitative tightening), on the argument this would reduce the Treasury’s cost of indemnifying the Bank’s QE-era losses.

Real, sourced scale

NEF: potential savings of £1.3bn/year (modest tiering) up to £11.3bn/year (a 10%-of-liquid-assets unremunerated requirement); slowing QT gilt sales could save £4.4bn/year, halting them £13.5bn/year

Independently modelled (think tank / academic)

NEF modelling, February 2025

Treasury transfers to cover the Bank’s QE-portfolio losses could reach a cumulative £130bn by 2030 on NEF’s figures (around £26bn/year currently), reversing £125bn in profits banked between 2012 and 2022 as some QE-era bonds have been sold at as little as 28% of their purchase price. This mechanism is shown here as CONTESTED rather than settled — see the trade-off below — and should never be presented with only the savings figure and no counter-view.

The Bank of England is costing us billions — New Economics Foundation (2025)

Institutional reportOpened & read

NEF’s own tiering/QT-slowdown savings estimates, directly fetched and read.

Trade-offs and evidence

NIESR’s published counter-position argues stopping or reducing interest on reserves is "superficially attractive" but "very dangerous and likely to be counterproductive": banks would try to shed reserves, worsening money-market liquidity and financial-stability risk, potentially pushing activity into less-regulated shadow banking, and the move would effectively constitute a default on the Treasury’s own indemnity to the Bank — threatening the Asset Purchase Facility’s solvency and the Bank’s own capital. NIESR frames current losses as the flip side of £120bn in profits the Treasury already banked in the earlier period, not a one-way "subsidy." UK Finance separately warns tiering risks raising banks’ wholesale funding costs, which could pass through to mortgage rates.

Don't Stop Paying Interest on Banks' Reserve Balances — William Allen, National Institute of Economic and Social Research (2022)

Institutional reportOpened & read

NIESR’s directly-fetched counter-argument, including the default-on-indemnity and financial-stability risks, and the acknowledgement that £120bn in prior Treasury profits sits on the other side of the ledger.

Where and when discussed before

2024
House of Commons Treasury Committee Quantitative Tightening inquiry; NEF submitted written evidence.
13 October 2022
NIESR published its counter-position.
February 2025
NEF published its most detailed costed proposal.

Housing (reference data) →

House prices, supply, rents and affordability — the reference page this analysis builds on

Housing and planning (economy module) →

Housebuilding starts and completions by tenure and region, and planning application decisions

Untapped revenue →

A wider, separate analysis of contested revenue-raising options across the whole budget

Methodology →

How this site classifies evidence, and which pages are reference versus analysis