PUBLIC ATTITUDES TO TAXATION AND PUBLIC SPENDING : SUMMARY OF FINDINGS

A two-stage national survey of attitudes to paying for better welfare services provided by central and local government, using specially-designed British Social Attitudes survey modules.

Key Points from the Research

There are urgent pressures on all Britain's public services, provided at the national, regional and local level, exacerbated by an ageing population, changing technology and escalation of public expectations of the role these services should play. Public opinion surveys consistently show that large majorities endorse higher spending on education, health, law and order and so on, while at the same time they reveal that almost everybody thinks their own tax bill is too high. Unsurprisingly, then, most politicians believe that people would not accept the tax increases necessary to improve these core services.

However, the findings of the project provide strong evidence that most people are willing to pay extra taxes, if this will bring about the improvements that they appear to demand.

The main research findings, as fare as national spending programmes are concerned, are:

• Clarifying the tax consequences of extra public spending affects the strength of an individual's support for these services: people are markedly less enthusiastic about higher welfare spending when the consequences in terms of higher tax bills for themselves are spelled out.
• Nonetheless, there is still a comfortable majority which sees both a personal and a national benefit in favour of extra spending on education and the NHS - the overwhelming priorities for extra public expenditure - and a substantial number want more spending on the police. However, support for less popular programmes, such as defence and culture and the arts, plummets when the tax personal consequences are made more explicit.
• There is a strong consensus between rich and poor on attitudes towards welfare spending, even when it is made clear to the better-off that they could be asked to shoulder a greater share of the tax burden to finance this spending. Contrary to expectations, richer people seemed no more reluctant to favour additional spending when paid for by progressive rather than regressive tax instruments.
• When it comes to spending on social security (see footnote), the survey results suggest that attitudes are influenced both by the universality of the benefit, and the extent to which various groups in the population are perceived to be "deserving" or "undeserving".
• Among those who have opted to take up private services, there is still a high level of support for extra state provision. There is some evidence that take-up of private medical insurance may be associated with reduced support for the NHS; even so, among those with private insurance a majority still sees higher spending on the NHS as in their own interests.

The main research findings, as far as local government spending programmes are concerned, are:

• There is little popular demand for a reduction of central government control over local councils. However, the public on balance believes - as it has done for a decade or so - that local rates should be decided locally, rather than influenced by capping mechanisms imposed by central government.
• Increases in spending on local services are far less popular than those for national programmes. Indeed, only a minority thought that higher spending in any of the seven areas was either good for them personally or for their local area. As in earlier years, the majority of respondents are content overall with current levels of spending and taxation in their local area. There is no evidence to suggest that the lifting of capping restrictions would unleash a pent-up demand for higher local spending, financed via the council tax.
• Of the seven programmes examined, local policing was the prime candidate for extra spending in the interests of the area as a whole (and attracted the lowest proportion opting for decreased spending - less than 10 per cent). Local schools and services for the elderly were the next most popular, although a sizeable minority of respondents thought they would be better off if local spending on these two services was cut.
• Support for higher spending, both in an individual's household's own interests and in the interests of the local area as a whole, are sensitive to rises in tax bills necessary to pay for increased provision. In contrast to our findings on attitudes towards national spending programmes, here we found that respondents who were faced with shouldering a high tax burden to pay for local services were less likely than average to think that higher spending on any of these services was either in their own interests or in the interests of the area as a whole. This finding held, even after controlling for other characteristics such as age and household income.

Footnote:
Because of the multiplicity of benefits available (and widely differing attitudes towards them), we decided not to include "social security" in the list of seven spending areas asked about. Instead we looked at the results of a different question, where respondents were asked to choose their first and second priority from a list of five benefits.