Thanks to pollsters WeThink, we polled public attitudes to paying more tax to provide the NHS with additional funding. We found a majority against raising tax, and few of those in favour of raising tax willing to pay more than £100 per year.
There may no longer be a majority in favour of increasing tax to pay for NHS spending
We first asked a simple question: “Do you think taxes should be increased to pay for additional NHS funding?”:
I was surprised to see a majority against increasing tax.1Other parties are included in the data, but I don’t show them here because the numbers are too small for statistical significance. Historic YouGov polling from 2017, 2018 and 2019 showed a majority in favour of raising income tax to fund the NHS. Recent YouGov polling has showed this majority reducing somewhat. Our result may be a further development of that, or it may result from polling differences.2Note that YouGov specifies income tax; we didn’t specify which tax we’d raise. YouGov also gives a “not sure” option and we did not. The question of whether “forced choice” is the best approach has a long history… I have no expertise in this, and was happy to be guided by the experts at WeThink.
Women are more strongly against increasing tax to fund the NHS:
Regional variation is limited, with the striking exception of Wales:
But we get more of a clue as to what’s going on if we break it down by age:
Perhaps it’s unsurprising that people who use the NHS more, and pay less tax, are more willing for tax to go up to pay for additional NHS funding.
And high earners are less in favour of raising tax:3I’ve combined the £60-80k, £80k-100k and £100k+ brackets in the data because otherwise the numbers are too small to be statistically valid.
Supporters of higher tax are willing to pay more tax themselves, but not much
Contrary to what some cynics might believe, the vast majority of those in favour of increasing tax are willing to pay more tax themselves:
But only to a very small degree. Very few of those people are then willing to pay more than £100/year in additional tax:
Willingness to pay goes up with income, but not enough to make much difference – the majority of people earning £60k or more aren’t willing to pay more than £100:4I’ve combined earning brackets and additional tax amounts to achieve statistically validity. We would need a much larger sample than that obtained by normal opinion polls to obtain statistically valid results for those on £100k+ incomes. So, tempting as it is to look at the raw numbers, and snigger at the 26% of people earning £100k are only willing to pay £10 more tax, these numbers are subject to massive uncertainty and shouldn’t be used.
The detailed tables don’t show much variation by age, region or education.
The reluctance by UK voters to pay additional tax either reflects, or causes, the UK to have one of the lowest overall rates of tax on average earners in the developed world. This statistic – the proportion of gross wages paid in tax – is often called the “tax wedge”, and the OECD provides data for 2022 which looks like this:
It’s even more dramatic than that, because those countries with a lower tax wedge than the UK, have a smaller state than the UK.
Another way to put that is: every country in the world which has higher public spending than the UK (as a % of GDP) also taxes the average worker more than the UK:
As the IFS points out, average earners in the UK have seen their tax burden fall over the last few years (with the overall tax increase borne by higher earners).
The relatively low income tax paid by an average earner in the UK, and the fact that this has fallen in recent times, is very rarely heard in public discourse. Indeed I’m not sure I can ever recall a politician making it.
This might explain why, despite widespread unhappiness with the state of the NHS, politicians are so unwilling to raise taxes significantly, and instead resort to gimmicks.
If you’re on the Left and you don’t talk about this, or your response is to question the statistics, then you’re in denial.
These polls are what happens when you want European-style public services, but think you can achieve it without European-style tax.
We can (and in my view should) raise additional tax from the wealthiest. But those who want to see significantly expanded public services need to either accept that means most ordinary people paying more tax (and advocate for that!), or believe that the UK can do something no country in the world can, and fund European levels of spending solely by taxing above-average taxpayers. I don’t think that’s possible. You’re free to disagree with me – but you need to understand you’re arguing for something that literally nobody has achieved.
I’m keen to explore more about public attitudes to tax using questions with actual numbers, rather than asking people generalities. Please do drop me a line if you have any suggestions for topics and approaches. When we commission a poll we will always publish its findings in full.
Many thanks to WeThink for conducting this polling for us pro bono – they didn’t even ask to be credited. The polling was conducted by WeThink on 14-15 March 2024, questioned 1,270 people and is weighted to a national representative population. The full tables are available here.
- 1Other parties are included in the data, but I don’t show them here because the numbers are too small for statistical significance.
- 2Note that YouGov specifies income tax; we didn’t specify which tax we’d raise. YouGov also gives a “not sure” option and we did not. The question of whether “forced choice” is the best approach has a long history… I have no expertise in this, and was happy to be guided by the experts at WeThink.
- 3I’ve combined the £60-80k, £80k-100k and £100k+ brackets in the data because otherwise the numbers are too small to be statistically valid.
- 4I’ve combined earning brackets and additional tax amounts to achieve statistically validity. We would need a much larger sample than that obtained by normal opinion polls to obtain statistically valid results for those on £100k+ incomes. So, tempting as it is to look at the raw numbers, and snigger at the 26% of people earning £100k are only willing to pay £10 more tax, these numbers are subject to massive uncertainty and shouldn’t be used.
28 responses to “Public attitudes to paying more tax to fund the NHS”
I don’t like hypothecation, and I think the question is itself suspect. The UK has a much lower tax take that most north european countries, and I suspect if we had the same level of public services they have, people would be prepared to pay a bit more for them. Furthermore, tax is not only about income tax, there’s NI, VAT, and many others. Combing Income tax and NI would result in a fairer system.and would reduce the taxes on working people as it would push up tak paid by th eretired (I am retired btW) however VAT could be banded with say a 30% rate in single purchases (like cars) over £45,000 and 50% over £125,000. Anyone paying £250,000 for a new Rolls |Royce is not going to be put off by the tax going up by 30% such is inelasticity of demand. By the same token, estate duty would yield more if some of the exemptions were removed and the rate lowered. Sat limit farmland transfers to 400 acres to protect family farms. Works of Art? tax them fully, Trusts? just legislate them out of existence for IHT purposes.
I agree that you can only take this hypothecation so far before the degree of sophistication you would need to produce an accurate result would be unworkable – but I still think this survey is fit for its main purpose: if less than half of people are hypothetically willing to part with £100 a year in extra tax then we know that we are a very, very long way away from it being politically attainable to advocate for a properly funded increase to NHS budgets through the tax system, that is probably an order of magnitude (at least) beneath what would be required.
I think as a tax person, if you are, you take the term “tax” more literally than the general population. The general population do not consider NI and Income Tax as separate taxes, anything coming off income is “tax” to them.
It is similar with many of the other duties and taxes in the indirect space. They consider all of them as a homogeneous entity called “tax”. It is only tax professionals that seem to get a “bee in their bonnet” about calling out each one separately.
So perhaps the questions are perfectly fine for the survey audience because if you become too specific the non-response rate will go through the roof eliminating most of its value.
Thanks for publishing this, Dan. I think people are realising that the NHS is incapable of spending money effectively. Spending on the NHS has increased in real terms every year bar one since 1948 and yet the problems just get ever greater.
Thanks to all those workers from foreign lands, the NHS has an extremely diverse workforce, far more so than the general population. And yet the NHS feels it needs to employ large numbers of DEI officers on generous salaries. This is just one example of how social engineering dogma is consistently placed above the needs of patients.
Do you have figures for the number of diversity, equality and inclusion officers employed by the NHS, what their average salaries are, and what the overall cost is of their employment? If you don’t, and I suspect you don’t, you’re just spreading an idiotic conspiracy theory, with a pretty nasty taste.
Dan, this is really interesting research but, unless I’ve misunderstood, I think there’s a slight flaw in the methodology for (or perhaps the interpretation of) the question of “how much more tax are you willing to pay?”. It’s not necessarily true to say that someone who selected £100 isn’t willing to pay more than £100 if the next available option is £500. It’s probably rare but, theoretically, they could be willing to pay up to £499 and still not select £500 (as they would be willing to pay £100 but not £500). More likely is that they would be willing to pay up to £299, so rounded down to £100 rather than up to £500. This may seem like a small difference but multiplied by tens of millions of income tax payers, that’s billions of pounds more tax.
you’re right – in retrospect I goofed because I presented the wrong range of options… I thought more people would opt to pay larger amounts. Next time (if there’s a next time!) I should be more granular between £100-500.
But even £250/year is only £7bn across the economy…
Yep, although technically that’s £7bn more just for the NHS, which I appreciate might only be about 4%(?) of its total budget, but would be 4% more without taking money away from other services to pay for it.
I imagine people probably didn’t think like this when answering the survey but, theoretically speaking, people might be willing to pay £100 more a year to fund the NHS, £100 more a year to fund the police, £100 more a year to fund education etc. Obviously it doesn’t work like that as we don’t have hypothecated taxes, but it would be interesting to find out if you got a different answer if the question was to fund all public services. Maybe people would say even less though…
Interesting. Maybe things have reached the stage of collapse where people are more concerned about keeping more of what they earn to help them pay for private care for themselves and their families.
Who wants to pay more tax only still to struggle to access NHS care whilst millions of people of working age are economically inactive?
It seems like we’re heading towards an American-style healthcare system by default where state healthcare is so awful it will soon only be for people who cannot afford to go private. Then, if forced into private healthcare, why be prepared to pay more and more for a state system that no longer using?
No surprise that people aren’t willing to pay more for an NHS that they personally don’t use, as an increasingly high proportion of tax payers now have access to private healthcare through work!
Be interesting to know how the nos think the NHS should be funded
Cynically I suspect there are leading Tories smiling and saying ‘job done’ about this. The worse the service becomes, the harder it is to rescue and logically the less willing people will be to put more money in, especially when each time they’re challenged the government says ‘we’re putting more money in than ever before’.
I’m passionately in favour of the NHS but even I can see it’s riddled with faults, from the amount hived off to the private sector (including PFI debts from the last building round) to a ridiculous inability to reuse or recycle kit. If a Labour govt could fix some of those, focus on preventative medicine and social prescribing, tackle the companies peddling obesity-inducing junk food, and publicly recognise that junior doctors aren’t actually 21-year olds and pay them properly – so no more strikes – then we might have a service people would be prepared to pay more tax for.
I think people see demand for NHS services – and by extension more funding for the NHS – as never ending, and to some degree they are right. Their rationale will be that the NHS will continue to need more tax revenue.
What may justify more funding, and therefore more support for increased taxation, is clarity and cast iron promise on what more funds will be used for. An expansion of primary care, addressing the backlog of repairs and the underfunding of key equipment in hospitals, and providing a comprehensive solution to social care should improve the service, reduce waiting lists, and ultimately reduce operating costs.
How to “guarantee” this, rather than just shovelling in more tax revenue, may be a key that unlocks greater public support.
We can’t really ask if people are willing to pay more unless we can tell them where the money will be spent. We all need honesty rather than being told it is all splendid but then discover that doctors are being replaced by Physicians Assistants and we are being kept in the dark about it
Physician Associates – Hansard – UK Parliament
I find it difficult to believe that there was ever support for higher taxes given the public could rightly be sceptical that it would result in any meaningful impact. Personally I would only be happy to do so if there was some effort made on the other side, such as ending defined benefit pensions for new staff.
Years ago, the LibDems had a policy of a 1p on the income tax rate for education. There was poling that suggested people supported that becuase they thought that 1p was not very much rather than 1p on the rate. Same problem…
funnily enough I have something on this coming out very soon…
It would be interesting to try to measure to what extent people would in principle be prepared to pay more tax, but in practice are unwilling to because they have no confidence that the extra money will be spent wisely or to good effect.
It would be interesting to try to determine if the reluctance to pay any or much more tax is due to a perception that overall taxes are already too high or a perception that the NHS’s issues cannot be fixed by additional funding (alone).
If those polled knew what was needed to be paid for such as – to prevent broken legs from failing lifts, or ceilings coming down on patients or waiting lists being shortened without lining the pockets of private providers etc, would people answer differently?
Poorly framed questions result in less valuable answers.
I’ve long been fascinated by the concept of universal basic income. I’d really like a poll on how much people would be prepared to pay to fund it, and what currently means tested, and non means tested, benefits they think it should replace.
to do that we’d need to have numbers on what the income would be, and what the marginal tax rate would be on people earning more than that.
I recall that some time in (I think) the 1990s a similar poll suggested that people would be prepared to pay an extra 1p or 2p in the pound Income Tax to fund the NHS. The LibDems based a GE campaign on a promise to do precisely that – and got wiped out. This poll at least seems to reflect a more reliable picture of how voters would actually respond to such a promise. I wonder whether that’s a result of a better polling methodology or a genuine change in opinion
This is not true.
The Liberal Democrats in 1992, 1997 and 2001 proposed to increase income tax by 1% to fund education. It was never a pledge for the NHS.
They didn’t get wiped out either – they won 22 seats in 1987, 20 in 1992, 46 in 1997, and 52 in 2001.
They *were* subsequently wiped out in 2015. The reason for the wipeout is usually said to be the fact that their 2010 manifesto had pledged to scrap tuition fees, whereas after being elected they instead tripled them (from £3k to £9k).
I see that point about the Lib Dems tripling tuition fees banded about a lot as a stick to beat them with. They were the junior partner in the coalition, so it’s not like they were the ones making the choice. They did allow themselves to be royally stitched-up though….
Clegg played a terrible hand over the whole affair. The system we have ended up with is economically indistinguishable from the graduate tax that a lot of his top brass were advocating in the first place and if they had sold it as such, rather than you notionally “borrowing” 9k a year, they would have saved much more face.
They could have said no.
Thanks for putting this work together, I can’t say I’m surprised at the result.
One issue which I don’t think any party addresses (probably because it’s a hot potato) is changing the funding structure of the NHS from ‘no cost’ to user cradle to grave care to a system of patient payment ( based on ability) which may incentivise the public to use the system properly as well as perhaps fund it better.