The Autumn Budget and public opinion – bills, taxes, and more

Budget breakthrough on bills? 

After a seemingly endless series of briefings and leaks around the autumn budget, on Wednesday the Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced a raft of measures aimed at stimulating economic growth and addressing ever-more-acute concerns about the cost of living. The budget arrived as polling from More in Common showed pessimism about the cost of living at record levels: 57% of people surveyed said they believed the cost of living crisis would ‘never’ end.

Commentators and campaigners have been pouring over the green measures in the budget: the central plank was moving so-called ‘green levies’ away from energy bills and on to general taxation. The aim is to save households an average of around £150 a year on energy bills that remain among the highest in Europe.

And our latest Climate Barometer tracker data shows just how central the question of energy bills, and who foots the bill for the transition to net zero, has become.

What do people blame for the cost of their energy bills? 

Despite evidence that over the past four years, fossil fuels cost the UK economy £183 billion, Climate Barometer data is showing growing concerns about the cost of green policies and their impact on energy bills.

The public still primarily blame high energy bills on the government: 1) failing to reform the energy market, 2) privatising energy companies, and 3) only looking after the interests of big energy companies. These factors are consistently chosen by upwards of 35% of people, and they tell a coherent story about where people ultimately attribute the bulk of the blame for the cost of household energy: the profits of an industry that many don’t see as fit for purpose, and which successive governments don’t seem to have been able to control.

In this context, initiatives like GB Energy (which aims to reform the energy market through a nationalised investment vehicle for renewables), or Reeves’ moves to reduce energy bills by bumping the green levies into taxation, tick lots of boxes.

But continual attacks on the costs of net zero have hit a nerve with households struggling with the costs of living, and the Climate Barometer tracker shows a rising trend across the past three years in attribution of high energy bills to climate change policies.

Our tracker asks people to select up to three explanations for high energy bills from a list of possible reasons. In our latest poll, 24% of respondents chose the government “introducing too many climate change initiatives” as a reason for high energy bills (up from 12% three years ago). At the same time, the percentage of people who think that not transitioning to renewables quickly enough has kept costs high continues to fall, and is now at 17% (down from 32%).

The attribution of high energy bills to climate initiatives comes mostly from Reform (55%) and Conservative (41%) supporters, with lower numbers for those who would vote Labour (8%) and Lib Dems (12%). There is also a large difference according to age: only 6% of those aged 18-24 select this as one of the top 3 government actions behind high energy bills, growing steadily to 43% among those aged 65+.

The signal is strong and consistent, with comparable questions around costs asked by Focal Data and YouGov in recent deep-dives on perceptions of net zero. In this context, only interventions that have tangible, noticeable impacts on energy bills are likely to reverse the direction of these trend lines. If the government can keep moving in this direction in the short term, then applying the net zero messaging guidance Climate Barometer published with Public First can help communicators make the positive case for net zero as a way to reduce costs in the long term.

Tax the rich?

One way to reduce energy bills would be to subsidise them via the highest earning parts of society. The Green Party’s recent pivot to ‘eco populism’ places a major focus on taxing the super-rich to ease the cost of living crisis, and there is some evidence that this kind of economically populist rhetoric can cut through across the political spectrum.

Global Witness polling showed  ‘71% of Reform-leaning voters support higher taxes on big polluters like oil and gas firms to fix the damage caused by global heating, such as from storms, flooding and drought’, and recent YouGov poll also found that 61% of those considering Reform would support a one-off tax on households with net wealth above £10 million, and 77% would back a windfall tax on energy companies.

But beyond windfalls and one-off taxes, there is a notable difference between the palatability of taxing businesses and taxing wealthy households.

When asked in our latest Climate Barometer tracker ‘Which…of the following groups do you think should pay for the majority of costs when it comes to reaching net zero in the UK?”, the public chose ‘businesses who pollute the most’ (46%), ‘the fossil fuel industry’ (36%), and ‘energy companies’ (32%) most often.

Taxing individuals (1% wealthiest households) came in fourth on the list.

And Reform supporters followed a similar pattern as the overall population (albeit with a reluctance to single out the ‘fossil fuel industry’), suggesting a relative consensus on corporate responsibility for the costs of reaching net zero, even as Reform and Conservative politicians turn against it.

However, it’s important to note that around 22% of Reform supporters chose the option “nothing would make net zero fair”. And when asked specifically about household taxes, the majority of Reform supporters (51%) “would not support anyone paying additional tax to effectively reduce climate change”, not even the wealthiest 1% in the country.

This isn’t an encouraging statistic. But perhaps there is a glimmer of hope in one further finding from our latest tracker wave: we asked people to read a number of short statements and indicate whether they had heard of them, and if so, whether they agreed with them.

Most people who had heard of it, agreed with the statement “the super rich are the biggest, worst polluters so they should pay more for the transition to clean energy” (including Reform voters). But many people, including 34% of Reform voters, had not heard it being said.

If the volume and reach can be increased on green populist messages like this, the apathy of Reform voters towards net zero might yet be overcome.