
Cash Isa limits set to be left untouched at next week's Mansion House speech
But the PA news agency understands that Ms Reeves will instead focus on new plans to provide consumers with the information and support they need to invest.
The Government is expected to continue talking to industry members and others about the options for reform, with a broad consensus that the UK's savings and investment culture needs to be encouraged.
Harriet Guevara, chief savings officer at Nottingham Building Society, said: 'This is positive news for savers and for lenders.
'We've consistently made the case, alongside others across the mutual and building society sector, for maintaining the full allowance, and welcome any decision to consult further with industry rather than rush through damaging reform that would disincentivise saving.
'Cash Isas remain a vital tool for millions to build financial resilience over time, particularly in the current economic climate.
'Our data shows more than half of our fixed Isa customers used the full £20,000 allowance last year, rising to 65% among those who save in-branch, underlining just how important this option is to those trying to get ahead financially.'
Some building societies reported seeing a jump in cash Isa applications last week, as speculation intensified over the future of the allowance.
Mutuals also warned that mortgages could become more costly and harder to access if the cash Isa limit was cut, with retail deposits being needed to fund mortgage lending.
The Government has been looking at how to help put more money in people's pockets. Earning stronger returns on savings by encouraging investing could be one way to do this, although the value of investments can go down as well as up.
The aim of a potential cut in the cash Isa allowance could have encouraged more investment in stocks and shares, some parts of the industry argued.
But some savings providers also argued that any cut to the cash Isa may simply encourage savers to park their money in taxable savings accounts, rather than the stock market.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has recently outlined plans to reduce the 'advice gap' with proposals to enable firms to offer a new type of help called 'targeted support' and make suggestions to groups of consumers with common characteristics.
Sarah Coles, head of personal finance, Hargreaves Lansdown, said that 'rushing into a change' would have been 'a real blow for savers and may not get more people to invest anyway'.
She said: 'Changing the boundary on advice and guidance will be truly transformational. Once companies can offer targeted support to their clients, it will help more people build their understanding and confidence, so they choose to branch out into investment because they know it's right for them – rather than feeling pushed into it to retain their Isa allowance.'
Ms Coles added: 'There is a real opportunity to simplify choice and open up investment opportunities. Dropping the 'stocks and shares' language and updating the Isa to call it an investment Isa would help overcome needless confusion.'
A Treasury spokesperson said: 'Our ambition is to ensure people's hard-earned savings are delivering the best returns and driving more investment into the UK economy.'

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


The Independent
a minute ago
- The Independent
Reeves ‘eyes £5bn windfall from sale of seized cryptocurrency'
Rachel Reeves is eyeing up a £5bn pre-Budget windfall as the government considers selling off seized cryptocurrency to plug a hole in the public finances. The Home Office is reportedly working with police forces to offload at least £5bn worth of Bitcoin and other currencies taken from criminals. It is planning to develop a storage system for the currencies to handle their sale, it has emerged, as concerns about Labour's spending plans mount ahead of the autumn Budget. Home Office plans for a 'crypto storage and realisation framework' would allow law enforcement to securely store frozen digital currencies and sell them, The Sunday Telegraph reported. Ms Reeves has been left with a gap of at least £5bn to fill when she sets out the government's spending plans this autumn, with the government's chaotic U-turn on planned benefit cuts raising the likelihood of tax hikes. The chancellor and Sir Keir Starmer have left the door open to a wealth tax to cover the shortfall. As well as the £5bn black hole left by the welfare climbdown, the impact of sluggish economic growth and Donald Trump 's trade war could leave the Treasury scrambling to find as much as £20bn in tax hikes or spending cuts elsewhere. It is not known how much cryptocurrency law enforcement agencies currently have, but one 2018 raid saw 61,000 Bitcoin seized from a Chinese Ponzi scheme. The value of Bitcoin has surged since Mr Trump's return to the White House, meaning the haul could be worth more than £5.4bn. Responding to the suggestion Ms Reeves could sell the reserves, Reform UK chairman Zia Yusuf said: 'This would be a terrible decision. The UK should be implementing Reform's Crypto Bill and increasing its Bitcoin reserves. 'Selling now will go down as a far worse decision than Gordon Brown's fire sale of our gold. 'The Westminster class are dinosaurs who don't get the future.' But Aidan Larkin, the chief executive of seizure company Asset Reality, told The Sunday Telegraph: 'There is oil under our feet in terms of digital assets, from an illicit perspective, that could have hundreds of millions of pounds coming back into the UK each year.' Bitcoin investors have been spurred on by Mr Trump, who has lent his support to the market both by promising new legislation and regulatory changes, but also even launching his own digital currencies. The leading cryptocurrency reached $120,000, marking both an all-time high and an important landmark for those who believe that bitcoin is undervalued.


The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
The quiet, matter of fact takeover of women holding senior economist roles
Rachel Reeves is rightly proud of being the first woman chancellor of the exchequer, but she is far from alone: the commanding heights of economic policymaking in the UK are becoming much less male. At a Westminster thinktank event last week about whether Labour is still a 'mission-led government', one of the most striking things was not the panel's answer, which you can probably guess, but the fact that it was made up of three women, and one token man. The Institute for Government's director, Hannah White, was joined by its chief economist, Gemma Tetlow, and the no-nonsense new director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Helen Miller – as well as the FT's Stephen Bush. Elsewhere, the Resolution Foundation is now run by Ruth Curtice, a former Treasury economist. Rain Newton-Smith, another economist, has the task of repairing the CBI's scandal-rocked reputation as its director general. Two of the four deputy governors of the Bank of England are women, too – as are the leaders of a string of powerful trades unions. This female takeover has been a quiet and matter of fact one – but it marks a significant change, very noticeable upon returning to covering the field, after a few years away. It has not yet been reflected in the gender balance of students picking economics at GCSE, A-level or as a degree, unfortunately. Research commissioned by the Bank of England showed earlier this year that economics classes at all levels remain about 70% male. But if anything, that makes it all the more striking that many of the most authoritative voices we will hear, in the run-up to Reeves's autumn budget, will be female. Aside from straightforward fairness, there are at least three potential benefits of this feminisation of the economic debate. The first, which Reeves herself has talked about directly, is the simple power of example: giving girls and young women the perception they could do jobs such as these. And while it must have been shattering, shedding a few tears at the dispatch box was a powerful part of that: many women of every age will have identified with her. Women just do cry more than men (a YouGov poll in 2015 found that 45% of women had cried at least once a month in the past year; for men, it was 11%). This has zero bearing on their ability to do their job – and if anything, may point to sincerity, rather than insouciance. Whatever you think of their policies, Theresa May's tears as she resigned, surely reflected better on her character than David Cameron's jaunty little hum. A second potential benefit of having women at the top of economic policymaking should be better decision-making. Jill Rutter, a former Treasury official and now senior research fellow at thinktank UK in a Changing Europe, recalls that back in the 1980s, 'there were virtually no women around the table making tax policy decisions, and it was very interesting, because almost all the senior people there had non-working wives'. She recalls being stared at if, as the junior official present, she piped up to ask how a particular policy might go down with women. Four decades later, Boris Johnson's bloke-heavy government was apparently capable of similar myopia. When senior Cabinet Office official Helen MacNamara testified at the Covid Inquiry, she argued that senior women's voices were all but absent from decision-making in the pandemic. 'Decisions were being taken where the impact on women was either lost or ignored,' she said in her written evidence. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion MacNamara pointed to a lack of consideration about the demands that school closures would place on families; the potential impact of lockdown on domestic violence victims; and the rules around pregnancy and birth. By contrast, she said, time was found to discuss the implications for, 'hunting, shooting and fishing'. Across today's economic landscape, there are plenty of pressing issues women may feel particularly moved to pursue – not least the gender pay gap (13%), which Reeves has pledged to narrow, and its less-noticed sister, the gender pensions gap (standing at a shocking 35% for private pension savings), which the work and pensions secretary, Liz Kendall, is expected to highlight in a speech on Monday. The third and more speculative potential upside of having more female economic policymakers, is a shift in the tone of debate. Not all women are moderate, or reasonable, or ground their arguments in the everyday – Liz Truss is certainly a counterexample – but I would gently suggest that on average, they tend to be a bit less prone to bluster, bravado, and what the kids call 'main character syndrome'. That was why it was depressing last week to see Reeves at the Mansion House, describing regulation as the 'boot on the neck' of British enterprise, in danger of 'choking off' innovation. No doubt the violent language was aimed at grabbing headlines (which it did) and communicating a clear message to her City audience. But it was jarring to read such a brute phrase in a public speech by the UK's most powerful woman. There is no shortage of tedious macho language around Keir Starmer – with anonymous briefers proudly telling columnists the prime minister's politics are 'hard Labour', and accusing MPs of 'knobheadery'. Perhaps as her crunch autumn budget approaches, Reeves can help the government to find a different, more relatable vocabulary. Judging by the comments of that mainly-female panel about Labour's first year in power last week, the debate in the coming months will be every bit as robust as ever. But it will be fascinating to see if it can be conducted in a different, calmer way: and perhaps more closely anchored to what MacNamara argued was missing from that shameful Johnson period: people, and families, and how people actually live their lives.


Glasgow Times
2 hours ago
- Glasgow Times
Water bills to see ‘small, steady' rise despite reform plans, says Reed
Steve Reed is expected to set out plans for 'root and branch reform' of the water sector on Monday, following the publication of a landmark review of the industry. Those plans are thought to include action to tackle sewage spills, invest in water infrastructure and the abolition of the industry's beleaguered regulator Ofwat as ministers seek to avoid a repeat of this year's 26% increase in bills. But while Mr Reed has promised that families will never again see 'huge shock hikes' to their bills, he was unable on Sunday to rule out further above-inflation increases. Although he told Sky News's Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips that bills should be 'as low as possible', he added that there needed to be 'appropriate bill rises' to secure 'appropriate levels of investment'. He said: 'A small, steady increase in bills is what people expect.' Environment Secretary Steve Reed is set to announce wide-ranging reform of the water industry on Monday in a bid to boost investment and cut pollution (Jonathan Brady/PA) Government sources have argued that the recent large rise in bills was necessary to pay for investment in long-neglected infrastructure, but expect Mr Reed's promised reforms to make further rises unnecessary. Asked about the possibility of expanding social tariffs to help households struggling with bills – a move that could see wealthier families pay more – Mr Reed said he had 'not been convinced yet' that this was necessary. Earlier on Sunday, Mr Reed had pledged to halve sewage pollution in England by 2030, after the Environment Agency said serious pollution incidents had risen by 60% in 2024. Mr Reed said the measures the Government was taking would enable it to significantly reduce pollution, with the aim of completely eliminating it by 2035 should it be re-elected. He also suggested to the BBC that he would resign if the 2030 target was not achieved, provided he was still in the same job by then. The Government has committed to halving sewage pollution in rivers by 2030 (Andrew Matthews/PA) His comments come before a major report by former Bank of England deputy governor Sir Jon Cunliffe, which is expected to recommend sweeping reform to water regulation on Monday. Sir Jon has been widely reported to be preparing to recommend the abolition of Ofwat, which has faced criticism over its handling of sewage spills and allowing water companies to pay large dividends while taking on significant debt and missing targets for investing in infrastructure. On Sunday, Mr Reed would not say whether he would scrap Ofwat, but also declined to say he had confidence in the regulator. He told the BBC's Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg: 'The regulator is clearly failing.' Sir Jon's interim report criticised regulation of the water sector, which is split between economic regulator Ofwat, the Environment Agency and the Drinking Water Inspectorate. But on Sunday, Conservative shadow communities secretary Kevin Hollinrake said he would be concerned any changes 'might just be shuffling the deckchairs on the Titanic'. He told the BBC: 'It's really important the regulator's effective, and we put in a lot of measures to give Ofwat more powers to regulate the water industry and a lot of those things were very effective.' Sir Ed Davey said the Lib Dems want a Clean Water Authority to 'hold these water companies to account' (PA) Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said he backed scrapping Ofwat, calling for a new Clean Water Authority to 'hold these water companies to account'. Sir Ed has also called for the Government to go further and aim to eliminate sewage pollution entirely by 2030, saying voters were 'fed up with empty promises from ministers while Britain's waterways continue to be ruined by sewage'. He added: 'For years water companies have paid out millions in dividends and bonuses. It would be deeply unfair if customers are now made to pick up the tab for this scandal through higher bills.' Although sweeping regulatory reform is likely to be on the table, full nationalisation of the industry will not be after the Government excluded it from Sir Jon's terms of reference. Smaller parties such as the Greens have called for nationalisation, while on Sunday Reform UK's Nigel Farage said he would look to strike a deal with the private sector to bring 50% of the water industry under public ownership. But Mr Farage was unable to say how much this would cost, leading Labour to accuse him of having 'nothing to offer apart from bluster', and shadow Treasury minister Gareth Davies to say he was 'flogging billion-pound promises with no plans to deliver them'. Mr Reed argued nationalisation would cost 'upwards of £100 billion', diverting resources from the NHS and taking years during which pollution would get worse.