Scores of protesters gathered in Whitehall on Tuesday calling on Rachel Reeves to reverse proposed cuts to welfare and implement a wealth tax on the super-rich instead.
Featuring speeches by economist Gary Stevenson, Green MP for Bristol Central Carla Denyer, Lord Prem Sikka and others, the War on Wealth rally at 1 Horseguards Road took aim at the Chancellor’s Spring Statement.
On top of last week’s announcement of approximately £5billion in benefit cuts, the Statement confirmed tougher eligibility criteria for various welfare and disability benefits would be implemented, alongside increases in defence spending financed by cutting overseas aid.
Advertising the protest, War on Want stated: “Inequality is soaring, the climate is collapsing, and public services are at breaking point.
“We need huge public investment to tackle these problems – but the UK government claims that there’s not enough money – instead cutting spending on aid, action on climate, and public services.
“Meanwhile, the extreme wealth of the super-rich is surging and going largely untaxed.”
War on Want hosted various speakers at the event, including representatives from Tax Justice UK, Patriotic Millionaires and Greenpeace.
Stevenson, author of the Sunday Times Best-Seller The Trading Game, also spoke, urging supporters to build a cross-party consensus for rebalancing the tax system to target assets rather than incomes.
Stevenson said: “We need to build this, and build this, and build this.
“Because this is the issue that unites this country and not just this country, that unites all people over the world that are being squeezed out of a quality of life that their parents and grandparents had.”
Tax Justice UK, an affiliate organisation to the demonstration, released a report last week proposing ten key reforms on taxing capital and wealth which it said could raise the Treasury £60billion per year.
The group’s campaign manager James Atkinson said: “We’re talking about cracking down on multinationals offshoring their profits to avoid paying tax, and there’s other things the government can be doing such as cracking down on tax abuse in the overseas territories.”
Atkinson said more had to be done beyond the government’s plans to increase capital gains and inheritance tax to target individual wealth and increase financial transparency in order for the UK to prosper in an uncertain geopolitical context.
He said: “If you took the average wealth of the top ten people in the Sunday Times Rich List in 2024, you would have to earn £3,600 an hour, every hour, of every day, for 665 years to get that average wealth, that £21billion is the average wealth of those top ten.”
The Equality Trust’s co-executive director Priya Sahni-Nicholas was in attendance at the rally too.
For the 2022-23 tax year, The Equality Trust reported the poorest 10% of British households paid 48% of their income in tax.
In contrast, the wealthiest 10% of households paid just 39% overall, with poorer households paying proportionally more for council tax and VAT.
Sahni-Nicholas said: “Our mission is for everyone to have a good life, and clearly with the concentrations of income, wealth, and power in the hands of a few, that’s just simply not possible.”
Conerns expressed over the chancellor’s Spring Statement included the freezing, in cash terms all new health-based Universal Credit claimants until 2030 and incapacity benefits at £97 per week from April 2026, tightened eligibility criteria personal independence payments (PIP) from next year, and making anyone under 22 ineligbile for the incapacity benefit top-up of universal credit.
Others were concern the defence spending increase to 2.36% of UK’s gross income will be financed by cutting overseas aid from 0.5% to 0.3% of gross income.
In response to the policies announced in the Spring Statement, War on Want’s senior ecominic justice campaigner Nuri Syed Corser claimed the chancellor had missed an opportunity to offer serious solutions.
Syed Corser said: “She could have promised huge investment to tackle the climate crisis, more money to restore our austerity-ravaged public services, and taxes on the super-rich that would raise revenue and address inequality.
“Instead, chancellor Rachel Reeves slashed public spending, by gutting the welfare and international aid budgets to boost military spending.
“This decision is appalling – it will harm the most vulnerable and allow the super-rich to keep amassing huge amounts of wealth.”
The Treasury Department was approached for comment.
Feature image credit: Toby Carmichael
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