UK public support green taxes to achieve net zero, survey finds  

A clear majority of the British public support the idea of green taxes and think the government should increase spending to address environmental issues, a new survey has found.

Climate experts said the findings pointed to a potential popular mandate to reform the tax system, but warned that ministers would need to move carefully to avoid a political backlash like the yellow vests movement in France that was triggered by anger over green taxes.

The nationwide poll by Britain Thinks for the Green Alliance think-tank found that nearly two-thirds of the public supported taxing environmentally damaging behaviour and ranked the environment the third-most important priority, after healthcare and jobs. 

Campaigners said the findings, published days after Boris Johnson toughened UK emissions targets by pledging to reduce them by 78 per cent by 2035 compared to 1990 levels, should embolden the government to take difficult steps towards turning targets into reality.

However the survey also pointed to areas of potential political tension, with low public support for levies such as road pricing, which experts warned would be needed to replace lost revenue from fuel duties as cars go electric.

The Treasury is preparing its net zero review, setting out in more detail “how the costs of achieving net zero emissions are [to be] distributed”. Experts say the document, which will be published ahead of the UN climate talks in Glasgow in November, known as COP26, will signal how bold the government is prepared to be in delivering its targets.

Chris Stark, chief executive of the Climate Change Committee, the independent government advisory body, said the Green Alliance poll pointed to the need for the Chancellor to produce a coherent strategy that did not isolate particular taxes, such as the fuel taxes, that had sparked the yellow vest protests.

“Tax is rarely popular. You can’t just raise a big tax and expect people to support it. It needs a holistic package, and you have to set up context for these changes and get public support,” he said.

He added that focus groups had shown the public would be more willing to accept green taxes if they understood them as part of a package, where money raised from transport taxes were used to subsidise the expensive installation of greener home heating.

Tim Lord, former director for clean growth at the business department and now at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, said the data showed that in some ways the public were ahead of the politicians. “The public have noticed the gap between rhetoric and reality on climate policy, reflected in low levels of trust in the government to deliver action to meet its ambitious targets,” he added.

He added that those same politicians could not avoid the coming debate on road pricing since the shift to electric vehicles will cost the Treasury £30bn a year — equivalent to a 6p rise in income tax.

Josh Buckland, who was an adviser to former business secretary Greg Clark and is now at business consultancy Flint Global, agreed the government could not continue to shy away from direct taxes like road pricing.

“The government needs to start low and move gradually, introducing pricing slowly so it grows, as fuel duties fall. It can also find ways to make it fairer, such as charging more in congested areas, and less for driving on quiet country roads,” he said.

The other key area of public support for reform, the survey found, was to remove perverse incentives that worked against the government’s own aims. 

These include the fact that new house building incurs zero value added tax, but renovating existing houses, which would play a key part in achieving lowering carbon emissions, is charged at the full 20 per cent. Also perversely, electricity, which can be green, also attracts significantly higher tax than gas, which is not.

“The UK tax system is more fit for the fossil fuel economy of the past than a sustainable future,” said Libby Peake, head of policy at Green Alliance. “This doesn’t make sense when the government wants to ramp up climate action. Why should people pay more to live green and do less to harm the planet?”

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