Pod Insights The Martin Lewis Podcast Budget 2025: Instant reaction special! About this episode In this special episode, Martin Lewis shares his initial reaction to Rachel Reeves' budget.
He tells Matt Chorley about the measures that will have an impact on you - including Lifetime ISAs, salary sacrifice on pensions, state pension increase, student finance repayment thresholds, the two-child benefit limit, high income property surcharge, and electric vehicle surcharges.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:20 Martin Lewis? Hello and welcome to this episode of the Martin Lewis podcast and this is an instant budget reaction special. The Chancellor has not long ago sat down. I've got a raft full of notes in front of me, lots I want to talk you through, including tax, energy, savings, pensions, benefits, student loans, mobile bills, property and more. I'm going to start off with the interview I've just done with Matt Chorley on Five Live, but I've got a lot more to add after that.
1:46 Speaker 00 Now though, let's find out, far more importantly, what Martin Lewis made of the budget. Afternoon, Martin.
1:52 Martin Lewis? Hello, yeah, I mean, surprisingly lot of retail policies in there. Those are the practical policies that I focus on rather than the bigger macroeconomic stuff out there. I've got a list in front of me, a summary of the 12 main points from my perspective. And if I give you an idea that the 12th point includes the fact that bus fares, rail fares and prescriptions are frozen, fuel duty cut has been extended for a year, booze going up with RPIs, cigarettes going up with inflation plus 2%, that's the 12th point. You can imagine just how big this list is. Of course, the headline is frozen tax thresholds. You know, fiscal drag going to go on to 2031, way beyond this parliament, interestingly. Will the government still be here? That's more your side than my side of it. But fiscal drag, let's be very plain, is a stealth tax, long known about, long happened.
2:36 Martin Lewis? For those who don't understand it, it works like this. Tax thresholds are frozen, but earnings, average earnings are rising and inflation is rising. So if you freeze the tax threshold and your earnings are going up, then a bigger proportion of your income is going to be paying tax than it would have done otherwise if the thresholds have gone up as well. And that means more of a, we pay more income tax. The rates haven't gone up, but we still all pay more income tax because average earnings going up and inflation's going up. But there's so much in here.
3:06 Speaker 00 And just on that, Martin, we should explain that you won't necessarily be worse off. It just means if you get a pay rise, you end up paying more tax than you would have done. And I suppose there's clearly a gamble there by politicians. They think, well, you don't see your pay packet shrinking, so therefore you might be less cross than if they'd put up the income tax.
3:24 Martin Lewis? But give me that, I disagree. You will be worse off. Let's, let's, let's do it on very plain numbers, right? If inflation is going up 4%.
3:33 Speaker 00 Yeah, but that's okay, yeah, yeah.
3:34 Martin Lewis? Yeah, big, prices are going up and earnings are going up. Earnings and prices tend to go up in a relatively proportionate amount. Earnings go up slightly more than prices. Freezing tax thresholds means that in real terms, people are often actually paying a higher proportion of their income in tax. But you're right, it's called a stealth tax because it's less obvious to see. You're still taking home more money because you've had an income rise, but the, the spending power of the money that you're taking home can be reduced because of stealth taxes. So that's why it's, that's why it's a stealth tax.
4:03 Speaker 00 Yes, exactly. You don't see, you, you, you, you feel it in your pocket, but you don't necessarily see it on your pay tip. In terms of the things that you were sort of lobbying for, campaigning on in the run up to this budget, how successful have you been, Martin?
4:16 Martin Lewis? Uh, I got three wins.
4:18 Speaker 00 Go on then, take us through them.
4:19 Martin Lewis? Two and a half, two and a half. So let's go through, the first one is on savings. I mean, I had a, in savings, I had a win amongst a lot of losses, but the losses were happening anyway. So I would argue, so what's happening? All the big savings changes come in, in April twenty twenty seven. The big one is that the cash ISA allowance, the amount of new money you can put in a cash ISA each year is dropping from twenty thousand pounds to twelve thousand pounds. The shares allowance is dropping from twenty, it's staying at twenty thousand pounds. So that would mean you have a twenty thousand pounds allowance, maximum twelve K in cash. So you could put twelve K in cash and eight K in shares. Now, when I met the Chancellor recently on this,
4:59 Martin Lewis? and this is about the third conversation I've had with it with senior members of the Treasury, the, the argument to me has always been, we are not doing this to raise revenue. We are doing this because we believe that young people in this country must be incentivized to invest more than to save, to put their money into the markets. I agree with the diagnosis of the symptoms. We do under invest in this country. I disagree with the mechanism. I'm not sure cutting the cash ISA limit will get more people to invest. I would like to see more investment education, better guidance and better incentives for investing. I've suggested a, an extra boost to people who are putting money in the stocks and shares ISA who are under forty. If you're putting up to two grand in, you get a ten percent boost on your money. That's not happening yet. You never know.
5:42 Martin Lewis? So what was the win is probably what you're thinking. The win, I think, when I was in with the Chancellor most recently, I came back with an argument that said, you are telling me you're going to cut the cash ISA limit to twelve thousand pounds to encourage young people to invest. But the people who have most money in cash ISAs are older people who you're not encouraging to, encouraging to invest. So that is a perverse policy. You're going to cut their limits and make them pay more tax, even though you're not actually trying to affect them. And so I said, you need, you need a carve out and we have the carve out. If you're aged over sixty five or older, your cash ISA limit will not be cut. And I, I'm, I think I'm going to try, claim a little bit because of that. But you know, there is bad news, more bad news for savers too, because also from April twenty twenty seven,
6:27 Martin Lewis? we're seeing an increase in the amount of tax that you pay on savings, property and dividends by two percent. So let's just explain this. I'll stick with savers. Currently, most people can earn a thousand pounds a year of interest tax-free if you're a basic rate taxpayer, outside of ISAs, cash ISAs are never taxable, outside of ISAs. Higher rate taxpayers can earn five hundred pounds a year of interest tax-free. If you earn more interest than that, you currently pay the normal income tax rates of twenty percent rate as a basic rate taxpayer, forty percent as a higher rate taxpayer, forty-five percent as a top rate taxpayer. From twenty twenty-seven, those rates are going up. So this sort of allows, you know, it's not working people because this isn't money from work, you know, this is money you've saved.
7:12 Martin Lewis? Some would argue they saved it from work. So they're going up to twenty-two p, forty-two p for higher rate taxpayers and forty-seven p. So those are the savings changes. Do you want the next one?
7:22 Speaker 00 Yeah. This is good. I feel like we're ticking a lot off here.
7:25 Martin Lewis? Energy, energy, and I've got, I've got details that haven't been announced on energy that I can go through now.
7:31 Speaker 00 So this is on energy bills?
7:33 Martin Lewis? Yeah, so people who were listening to me last week, I went ballistic at the price cap rise. The price cap went at naught point two percent, but underneath that, the cost of every unit of electricity you use has gone up five point one percent and gas has gone down five point seven percent. And the perverse thing about that, that I was very strong on, was the reason the costs went up in the price cap is because wholesale, isn't wholesale rates, the rates that energy firms pay for gas and electricity has gone down over the three-month assessment period. It's policy costs, debt forgiveness, the cost of nuclear, increasing cost of the warm home discount. So we had this ridiculous perverse situation, I keep using perverse today, right?
8:16 Martin Lewis? But the government is trying to encourage people to stop using gas for heat pumps and get them to use more electricity. But then this price cap in January, we're seeing a five percent rise in electricity costs and a five percent drop in gas costs because all of the policy costs are being put on the electricity bill because it's universal. So policy costs are to get people to use more electricity, but they are what's driving up electricity prices and bringing down gas prices. You can see why it's a. Madness moment. The budget is addressing that. So what we heard today, and it's exactly what I've been calling for, is that the levies on your electricity bills, seventy-five percent of them are going to be shifted to general taxation.
9:00 Martin Lewis? Now, general taxation is more progressive than energy bills. Energy bills are regressive. If you earn ten times as much, your energy bills aren't ten times as high. So that's actually important. They're also getting rid of the eco scheme. Now, the government's numbers are this will reduce the typical bill from the first of April twenty twenty-six price cap, everything else remaining equal by a hundred and fifty pounds a year. I I can go into more detail now. I've spoken to a very senior member of the government who deals with this. That's all I can say, but you can probably work that out. And since the budget, we think that the electricity unit rate will drop three point four percent, three point four pence per kilowatt hour, and the gas unit rate, naught point three p per kilowatt hour. Now, that will happen on the price cap.
9:45 Martin Lewis? What I am most concerned about is that has to factor through to everybody else, including fixes. Now, what the government has said to me on that is that they will be speaking to its suppliers, and it is their intention that suppliers pass on all the savings to consumers in April. If they don't and fixes don't reduce by the same amount, it will be a bastardization of the market because the government has been encouraging people to switch and to fix and to get off the price cap. So those people must see the same reduction, and I'll be on the warpath if that doesn't happen. But the conversation I had today, I'm quite hopeful it will happen, and there is a precedent in the energy guarantee. And the energy price guarantee. So those are my two main ones. There's loads more. Oh, oh, two letters, the other one.
10:27 Martin Lewis? In the back of the budget doc, in the back of the budget documents, there's a very small note on this. And I'm sorry about the code, everyone, you can work it out. But when I spoke today to a very senior member of the Treasury. Right, that person told me that the Chancellor will be writing a letter to Ofcom on the back of my letter to her about O2 hiking prices higher than it said it would hike them when people signed up, which is an absolute, you know, two fingers up to the new Ofcom code, asking Ofcom to tighten the code. That letter should be going out today. I've been promised I will be getting a copy of it. So that's another win. And there's loads more to talk about as well, Matt. How's that for a start?
11:10 Speaker 00 Oh, it's very good. In fact, we've had so many messages, Martin. Andy says, why doesn't Starmer sack Reeves and bring in Martin Lewis? He knows what he's talking about.
11:17 Martin Lewis? Because Martin Lewis would prefer to wire his nipples to electrodes and not in a fun way than be Chancellor and would never take a party whip. I am not available.
11:26 Speaker 00 You're not available. You're ruling yourself out.
11:28 Martin Lewis? I'm also not qualified. You know, the difference between me and a Chancellor, I only think about consumers. That's my job. I don't have to balance the economy. I don't have to balance the bond market. I don't have to balance businesses. I'm a very, I'm a declared biased, a pro-consumer biased journalist and consumer journalist and campaigning journalist, if you like. So that's why people like me. If I became a politician, I'd have to look at all the other vested interests and they wouldn't like me anymore.
11:52 Speaker 00 Now, just before I let you go, Martin, in our big budget bingo card, you opted for ISA on the card, which I think helped the guest prediction, the guest card, slightly because we've talked about the ISAs and changing the rates and all that. But I don't think, I don't think your colleagues and the words they chose helped. So we appreciate you joining in, but you were better at picking words than some of the other guests, I'm afraid to say.
12:17 Martin Lewis? Well, I don't know those other guests. You know what? ISIS was always going to be in there. There's also news on the lifetime ISA, the salary sacrifices, a lot more. Thank you for having me on.
12:35 Martin Lewis? Okay, so that was the interview with Matt. Let me start to talk you through a few more things that were in the budget. We've heard that from April 2029, salary sacrifice on pensions is going to be limited. So let me explain this. Some people, the way that you pay for your pension is that you have your salary reduced by your company and the amount that your salary has been reduced by your company, the company then puts into your pension as well as adding its own contributions on top. The reason that's beneficial is both you and the company therefore don't pay national insurance on that amount and that amount often goes into your pension. Now, the government has said that from, or the Chancellor has said that from April 2029, the maximum amount
13:20 Martin Lewis? you'll be able to salary sacrifice and get the national insurance gain is £2,000 a year. You can still salary sacrifice above that, but you won't get the national insurance gains. So that's a big revenue raiser that's going to be coming from the government and it will also mean that those people are doing it with bigger pensions are going to see the amount that they're having into their pension reduced. While we're on pensions, let's just do the state pension. We already knew this. From April 2026, it's going to rise 4.8%. That means somebody on the full new state pension will be on £12,547 a year, which is up £574. For someone on the full old
14:00 Martin Lewis? state pension, so that's someone who hit state pension age before April 2016, it's going to be £9,615 a year, up £439. Now, the interesting thing about the state pension is because of that fiscal drag, because of those thresholds being frozen and the fact that the state pension is certain to rise because of the triple lock, in the 2027 tax year, there will be people who will be paying tax on the state pension even if they have no other income. Now, the government and the Chancellor said in the budget that they will ease the administrative burden for pensioners
14:44 Martin Lewis? whose sole income is the state pension and who need to pay a small amount of tax. Now, it's quite difficult to read exactly what they mean. I presume you'll still pay the tax. We don't know the mechanism, how they're going to ease this burden, but I think it's interesting they're starting to think about the fact that the state pension alone will be taxed. Moving on.
15:05 Martin Lewis? Let's do students next. Students, Plan Two loans.
15:11 Martin Lewis? The threshold at which you repay will be frozen next April until the 2030-31 tax year. So first of all, who is on a Plan Two loan? It's people from England who started university from 2012 up until 2022. And people from Wales who started university at any time on or after 2012. It is the biggest plan. It's the one that the most people are on for repaying their student loan. Now currently, you repay nine percent of everything you earn above £28,470. From April 2026, you'll repay nine percent of everything you earn above £29,385.
15:56 Martin Lewis? That will then be frozen for three years. This is fiscal drag in another name. Because in reality, the way student loan repayments work is they're a bit like a tax. You know, you pay a percentage above a threshold. So if you freeze the threshold and your earnings go up and inflation goes up, then effectively you're paying a bigger proportion of your income on student loans. And that is going to be happening. Next one, the end of the two-child benefit limit in April 2026. Widely flagged, big political issue, totally misunderstood by many people. So I'm going to quickly talk you through that. Right, here's how it works. What the two-child benefit limit is, and this is what's going,
16:38 Martin Lewis? is currently if you get universal credit and you have more than two children, the extra costs from the third or the fourth or the fifth child are not factored into the calculation of how much universal credit you get. It's only the costs of two children that are factored in. From April, that will go. So that if you have extra costs due to a third or a fourth or a fifth child, then you will get extra benefit because of it. This benefit limit should not be confused with, A, I feel like I'm doing this writing down, should not be confused with, A, child benefit, the universal payment that everybody gets, although it is means tested. Of course, if you earn above £60,000, it starts to reduce. It's not that, this is only about universal credit. And B, the benefits cap. There is a limit on the amount of total benefits you can get a year.
17:25 Martin Lewis? Both universal credit and child benefit feed into that benefits cap. But it's often called the two child benefit cap. It's not, it's the two child benefit limit. And there is a separate thing called the benefits cap, which is the total amount that you can get on benefits a year. I'm going to leave that there because it's complex and I won't have other stuff I want to talk about. Next one. Lifetime ISAs. I was hoping that, and I talked about it in one of the question time pods. I was hoping that we were going to see a change in this budget. We're not. But was in the small print, but wasn't announced. Is that at the start of 2026, there'll be a consultation for a new first time buyer's ISA product that will work in a similar way to replace the lifetime ISA.
18:07 Martin Lewis? So I presume the whole pension gain that you get from a lifetime ISA will be disappearing. We don't know when that will come in because it's a consultation in 2026. But what hasn't happened and the thing I've been long lobbying for. It's currently on a lifetime ISA. You can only use it and get the bonus if you are buying, and the bonus is 25% on top of up to £4,000 put in. So £1,000 of free cash a year. You can only get the bonus if you're buying a property that costs under £450,000. And that hasn't moved since 2017 and should have gone up. I was hoping to see it go up to £550,000 in this budget. I'd had sort of warm feelings on that, but then again, I'd have warm feelings from Jeremy Hunt and it didn't happen then either.
18:50 Martin Lewis? I have had a conversation, using my format, with a very senior member of the Treasury today. And being told that within the consultation coming at the beginning of next year, they will be looking at increasing the lifetime ISA limit as well as the new product, which I think is really important. I will also be asking that because the lifetime ISA would end up being a dead product, a bit like the Help to Buy ISA is now. Then I think both the LISA and the Help to Buy ISA, you should be able to port seamlessly into the new product, which would be better for everybody who wanted it, if that new product has better terms. What else do I have left? The high income property surcharge, that's been everywhere, but let's just do it quickly. What the numbers are, it's England only, it worked through
19:33 Martin Lewis? the council tax system, but it's a surcharge on top from April 2028. If your home is worth between two and two and a half million pounds, it'd be two and a half grand a year. If it's between two and a half and three and a half million pounds, it'll be 3,500 pounds a year. If it's between three and a half and five million pounds, it'll be 5,000 pounds a year. And if it's five million pounds or more, it'll be seven and a half thousand pounds a year. Final thing, if you drive an electric vehicle, from April 2028, there will be a three p a mile surcharge on top of vehicle emissions duty and 1.5 p a mile on hybrids, plug-in hybrids specifically. Basically, it's saying that people who have electric vehicles, they're not paying for the the cost on fuel, the tax on fuel, so they want to tax them in another way. And that'll be coming in in April 2028. But we don't yet
20:17 Martin Lewis? know how they'll be measuring the mileage, whether it'll be self-declared, or whether there'll be a box in your car. So all of that is to come, but it's all the long way away. And I think that's quite interesting on this. As I look down this list, there's a few things in 26, there's quite a lot in 27, there's some in 28, and there's some in 29, and there's a few that go on to 2031. So a lot of the amounts that's made today will not be coming in place immediately. Obviously, we'll do a lot more information about them on the pod in the future. Just before I go, though, I did an interview on the Today Programme on Friday about energy bills. And the Chancellor has told me that she heard it and agreed with the general context. This was me ranting about the fact that we're putting electricity
21:00 Martin Lewis? prices up because of policy, and the fact that there are so many policy costs in there, and it's regressive. So I don't know whether any of the changes today are actually due to that, or they were planned anyway. But the Chancellor heard it, and I thought on the back of what's been announced today, a good way to finish this podcast is to play it to you, too. The energy price cap for England, Wales and Scotland this winter will be 0.2%
21:23 Speaker 05 And higher from January. It means that a household using a typical amount of energy will pay one thousand seven hundred and fifty eight pounds a year, which is three pounds higher than now. But of course, those figures on their own are, as always, only part of the story, really. So here to give us the full context, so you know what they mean for you, is Martin Lewis, founder of Money Saving Expert. Morning, Martin.
21:43 Martin Lewis? Morning. I'd say they're not even part of the story. They're none of the story. The energy price cap we're talking about only lasts three months. So to give an annual figure is completely nonsense. I mean, this is a much bigger story than it looks on that headline naught point two percent rise. What's actually happening is electricity unit rates are going up five percent. The electricity standing charge, the daily charge you pay just for the facility of having electricity, is going up two percent. The gas standing charge is going up three percent and the gas unit rate, the amount you pay for each unit of gas, is going down six percent. So those people who use more electricity than gas or only have electricity are actually going to see a rise of three to four percent
22:23 Martin Lewis? in January. The average, the typical naught point two percent does not tell the story. And what's really, I mean, just perverse here is the reason we're seeing those costs go up on electricity is not the normal reason of wholesale rates, the costs that gas and electricity firms pay to buy in energy. That's gone down over the three month assessment period. These are policy costs. These are the costs of the warm home discount. These are the costs of connecting renewables to the network. These are the costs of nuclear power being put on board. These are all policy costs and network costs. So here we are
23:05 Martin Lewis? in a time when the government's stated policy is to reduce the usage of gas and encourage people onto heat pumps, that what we are doing is artificially putting up the cost of electricity and reducing the cost of gas so that gas is relatively cheaper, which is of course clearly a perverse incentive that's going to encourage more people to use gas. More so, this is a regressive way to pay for policy.
23:33 Martin Lewis? Energy bills are regressive. Wealthier people do not see pay as much a proportion of their income on energy as poorer people do. So the fact we are choosing to put the policy costs, and this is going to happen even more. The prediction is the four or five percent rise in April. The fact we're choosing to put the policy costs onto electricity bills as opposed to pay for the amount of general taxation, which is more progressive. We need a national debate about this because these policy costs are going to make up an ever bigger proportion of our bills. The wholesale costs, the costs you're actually paying for the energy firms are paying, is making up a smaller proportion. And this this particular price cap announcement just shows the ludicrousness of the situation.
24:17 Speaker 05 Martin, this is a layman's question, although most of mine on this topic tend to be. Why, if it's policy choices, is there a way that they could not do that in the winter? Because that's when people are using their gas, their electricity, a lot of it goes on heating. Is it something that could just be, and you've made it clear that you don't think that's the right way to do it anyway, but is there an argument for just doing it in the summer months if that's the way they want to do it?
24:38 Martin Lewis? They're doing it in every month and it's going to go up. The current prediction is we're going to see a rise of four to five percent in April because of policy costs. And it's going to keep going up. And, you know, the likelihood is with the the move that we have towards renewables and improving our infrastructure on energy, we're going to continue to see policy costs rise probably until the mid 2030s. So it isn't a seasonal thing, it's a constant thing. And that's why I think we now need to have a national debate about how we pay for energy policy, because we're paying for it on electricity bills. And as well as the the perverseness, as I've said, of the differential between gas and electricity, when that goes against what we're trying to do with policy, we also have to look at the regressive nature of it. I mean, I should do what I do for my proper job, which is tell people what they should be doing right now.
25:22 Martin Lewis? Look, these bills are going up 0.2%. The prediction is they're going up again in the April price cap of around four or five percent, and then they're going to stay static after that. The cheapest fixes on the market right now are 10% cheaper than the energy price cap. The energy price cap is a pants cap. You should not be on it if you possibly can get off it. I would suggest you get onto a whole of market Paris and site like my cheap energy club or one of the others out there. But I'd probably do it next week because I hear cheaper tariffs are coming in next week. There are people who have to be on the price cap. Those are the people who are on old school prepayment meters because there's no choice. But for everyone else, either get yourself onto a fix or a cheap time of use tariff or an EV tariff. If you're on the price cap, it's a pants cap and you are paying too much. So you should also get off it.
26:07 Speaker 05 Yeah, just a well shop around. It's always the key, isn't it? Just a very, very, very quick thought. The energy price cap, which was brought in a couple of years ago, is there still a future for that?
26:16 Martin Lewis? Well, until we bring in the social tariff, which is what I've actually always called for. You know, we have a problem in energy. We have to look at who are the legitimate victims of a competitive market. You, Anna, forgive me. If you chose not to switch and stay on the price cap, that's your problem. You're perfectly capable of switching and if you haven't done it out of, you know, just not being bothered, that would be your problem. But a struggling 92 year old grandpa with onset dementia, who's not capable of accessing a competitive market needs protection. The price cap was brought in as a backstop for those people, though it is too expensive for that particular job. The problem is now two thirds of homes are on the price cap, even though it was only meant to be a backstop. I would like to see a social tariff where those people who are illegitimate victims of competition,
27:00 Martin Lewis? the vulnerable who can't switch and can't engage in the competitive market are given much better pricing. And then if we're going to have a market based system and I'm agnostic to whether we do that or we do actually just regulate or nationalise the whole thing. But if we're going to have a market based system, then you need proper competition. And the price cap is a weird halfway house. So there is a future for the price cap because what we really need is a social tariff. But unfortunately, I'm not seeing any moves towards a social tariff to protect the vulnerable.
27:29 Martin Lewis? And that is it for this super quick budget reaction summary. Sorry, it's a bit rough and ready and there's no producer Matt's voice in it. And we've done it like that, but I wanted to get it out quickly. We'll be back with a question time podcast on Monday and the normal podcast next week. Please, if you've enjoyed it, do suggest to friends that they subscribe to. We put out a new episode normally on a Monday and on a Thursday. Thank you so much for listening. Take care.
28:09 Speaker 06 Martin Lewis is the founder of MoneySavingExpert.com. But of course, other consumer and price comparison websites are available. You can get in touch with Martin's podcast production team by emailing [email protected] . The offers and rates mentioned in the podcast are correct at the time of recording. However, if you are listening on demand, it's worth double checking as details can date. Remember to subscribe on BBC Sounds and leave us a review however you listen.
28:45 Speaker 01 In Our Time is a world-class seminar every week. Why was Jeremy a lonely snail? What were lines doing in York in the third century? I'm Misha Glennie and every week I'm joined by expert guests to explore the ideas that shape our world.
29:00 Speaker 02 It's one of the first times really that you consistently see someone painting teeth. I know that sounds bonkers.
29:05 Speaker 03 If I was going to define mathematics, I would say it's the study of structure.
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