Cost of living and tax rises key concerns for constituents ahead of Budget

As Chancellor Rachel Reeves prepares to deliver her autumn Budget in a month’s time, people living in her Leeds West and Pudsey constituency have shared their hopes – with the cost of living and tax rises foremost among their concerns.

The chancellor will deliver her second Budget on 26 November, and has acknowledged she is considering tax rises and spending cuts.

Speaking during a visit to Leeds, she told the BBC: “Although I can’t talk about individual measures at this stage, I understand that the cost of living is still people’s number-one concern.”

This was confirmed by her constituents in Pudsey, who said they were still struggling with the cost of living, while tax rises would put even more pressure on their finances.

Danny Dance, 66, is a former police officer and said he “can’t complain” about his own finances, but was worried about the pressure on his children and grandchildren.

He said that “Labour’s policy has always been tax the rich” but he believed the “very rich aren’t going to stand for that they’ll just move abroad”.

Mr Dance would like to see the chancellor “sort this tax out”, adding “tax is not the answer, all they ever seem to do is tax, tax tax, which is ridiculous”.

As a final thought, he said the way the winter fuel allowance was removed from pensioners last year was “disgusting” and that many could not afford to heat their homes.

Although that policy has since been reversed, Mr Dance still thought more should be done to help pensioners.

In last year’s Budget the Chancellor raised National Insurance contributions which meant from April, the rate employers paid in National Insurance rose from 13.8% to 15%.

And the threshold at which they started paying the tax on each employee’s salary was reduced from £9,100 per year to £5,000.

Susan Dubja, 65, was shopping on Pudsey High Street with her husband who is struggling to find work.

She would like to see National Insurance contributions scrapped completely in next month’s Budget.

Mrs Dubja said: “They want people to get a job, and they’re putting National Insurance up and now it is hard to get a job, businesses won’t employ my husband as it is too expensive.”

When it came to shopping, Mrs Dubja said she had seen prices go up significantly over the last few years, saying: “It’s not just pennies, it’s pounds, and it is not fair on people who are struggling.”

She said it felt like in the past few Budgets it was “the working man who is penalised”.

Anthony Irwin, who is 63 and lives on his own, said he thought the chancellor must do something to help everyone with the rise in the cost of living.

“I don’t go shopping much so don’t notice the prices and then when I do and get to the till I stop and think there must be something wrong,” he said.

This week the UK inflation rate for all items remained stable at a lower-than-expected 3.8% in the year to September, official figures show.

It means food and drink prices in the UK are increasing at their slowest rate in more than a year, while overall inflation remains unchanged for the third month in a row.

But on top of food Mr Irwin also has to budget for other bills like electricity and council tax, and said people just wanted to earn a “decent wage” without being “taxed to the hilt”.

He thought the country needed a break from rising taxes and to get back to “some kind of stability”.

Speaking in Leeds, Reeves said: “I’m not going to start commenting on what’s going to be in the Budget as we are still going through that process.”

But she said she understood people’s anxieties over the cost of living.

She said: “During the election campaign and my whole time as chancellor I recognise that it is ordinary working people that have shouldered a lot of the burden over the last few years and so I will do things differently.

“I understand that the cost of living is still people’s number-one concern after the extraordinary levels of inflation we’ve experienced over the last few years but I do realise the lasting impact of those price rises on ordinary people across the country.”

BBC Politics North (Yorkshire and Lincolnshire) airs on BBC One at 10:00 GMT, or catch up on iPlayer.