Rachel Reeves has been talking about ‘reforming’ cash ISAs for a while to “encourage investment” in the dying London Stock Exchange. She’s now set to slash the allowance from £20,000 down to as low as £5,000 in her Mansion House speech on 15 July. Savers squirming…
Now the UK’s largest mortgage lenders – Yorkshire, Coventry and Skipton building societies – have said cutting the allowance will send mortgage costs soaring costs. Cash ISAs make up 39% of building societies’ retail savings balances, a major source of mortgage funding…
Yorkshire Building Society’s Chris Irwin said: “Reducing Isa deposits could make mortgages more expensive and less available.” Meanwhile, Money Saving Expert founder Martin Lewis said cutting ISA allowances would be a huge “mistake” and that it won’t “nudge people to invest not save”. Guido’s analysis shows that if the value of cash ISAs had been herded into the stock market during Trump’s tariff-fuelled market frenzy, savers would have ended up £31 billion worse off. A crying shame for savers…
Andy Haldane, Burnham’s recent adviser on the economy who has not taken up a No10 job, told Andrew Marr on LBC:
“The market now suspects that this is a traditional tax-and-spend socialist government with better TikTok videos…
imposing windfall taxes on oil & gas or on banks or upping capital gains tax would […] repeat the mistake that Rachel made […] The Achilles heel, the fiscal Achilles heel of this government thus far has been its unwillingness and/or inability to cut public spending.”