Inside Britain’s hardest-working town that doesn’t trust Labour with its taxes ...Middle East

Tarek Menacere, a 41-year-old software developer, would not mind paying more tax – he just does not trust the current Labour Government to spend it “wisely”.

“There’s been no big ambition to put things back into public services,” he told The i Paper.

“I would pay more if you could see where the money was being spent, so you could see it was helping.”

Despite his concerns, Mr Menacere is the kind of voter who may well end up with less money in his pocket following next week’s Budget.

Labour reportedly considers only those earning less than £45,000 a year as the kind of “working people” it needs to protect from tax increases.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves is looking for ways to plug a hole in public finances that is anywhere between £20bn and £30bn.

The Government has backtracked on plans to raise income tax, apparently in fear of it prompting fresh public anger, and is now instead looking at a package of smaller measures, including freezing tax thresholds for two years.

Labour’s struggle to decide who should pay more is likely to play out in places like Warrington, the industrial town in Cheshire where Menacere works remotely for a London company.

With strengths in logistics, manufacturing and financial services, wages in Warrington are above the national average at £48,332, according to analysis of ONS data carried out by Northern Powerhouse Partnership (NPP).

‘You don’t want to stifle people doing well’

But Mr Menacere does not believe simply trying to protect those on lower incomes will be enough.

“They need to tax companies a lot higher, look at the price rises, the cost of food, if you just look to protect people at the bottom end, it isn’t going to help,” he said.

“Wages haven’t kept up.”

Warrington has been one of the top-performing towns in the North in recent decades, with a booming housing sector and the headquarters of big employers such as water company United Utilities and nuclear energy giant Sellafield.

A £142m revamp of the historic market hall, multiscreen cinema and restaurants was completed in 2020 and is now thriving.

But Sean Lyall, operations director at the Two Brothers coffee shop in the market, worries that Labour’s tax rises may target his customers.

“[Our coffee] is an affordable luxury,” he said.

“Everything needs paying for, doesn’t it, but I think the best way to raise more tax is stimulating more growth.

“As a business, I wouldn’t mind paying more tax if we were making more money, but by raising things like income tax, people have less money to spend with us.

“You don’t want to stifle people doing well; there’s not that incentive to do well if you’re just going to get more taken off you.”

Mr Lyall said his sense is that there is a lot of “dissatisfaction” with the current Labour government in Warrington.

And he believes further tax rises are unlikely to go down well while local priorities are yet to be addressed.

Warrington’s hospital has the worst A&E waits in the country, according to league tables published by the Government this summer.

“If people were seeing the things they wanted to see, they might be happy to pay higher taxes,” said Mr Lyall.

“There’s not a lot of goodwill for Labour.

“Warrington has still got long waiting lists, we were due a new hospital which we’re massively in need of, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.

“They throw houses up in Warrington all the time, there’s a lot of vacant land, if you look at the population now [compared to] back when the hospital was built, it hasn’t got the capacity.”

MPs have been campaigning for a new hospital for years without success and Sarah Hall, the Labour MP for Warrington South, recently admitted there are now other places “ahead of us in the queue”.

Hall and Warrington North MP Charlotte Nichols are now calling for an urgent treatment centre to be built instead to ease pressure on A&E services.

‘Everyone is being squeezed – we’re the cash cows’

Jess and Calvin Clayton, moved with their two-year-old son Eric, to Warrington from Bury, Greater Manchester, and are full of praise for the town.

“It’s really nice, there’s good playgrounds, it feels safe,” said Mrs Clayton.

But the couple are currently surviving on one income after Mrs Clayton found it was not worthwhile going back to work due to the cost of childcare.

They feel the Government has not done enough to make their lives easier.

“Everyone is being squeezed, we’re the cash cows, aren’t we?” said Mr Clayton, a 33-year-old rail worker.

“I already had my national insurance go up by 5 per cent – they changed how we get paid and I lost £30 a week.”

Mr Clayton said he wants to see improvements in public services, especially the NHS, if Labour are going to raise taxes.

“Why can’t I get an NHS dentist? I didn’t go for six years and then when I tried to get an appointment, they said I’d been kicked off,” he said.

“Why is it so hard?

“I’m disillusioned with all of them [politicians] to be honest, we’re the downtrodden majority.”

Ian Isherwood, a 29-year-old former care worker who is now on disability benefits, is also unimpressed with Labour’s performance in government so far.

“I want a wealth tax – there should be more tax on the multimillionaires,” he said.

“That money would pay for better public services. Most people pay enough tax as it is, we should make the 1 per cent pay more, the average person is struggling.

“You shouldn’t increase it for ordinary people, there’s still inflation, the cost of food.

“I voted for Labour but I will be voting for the Greens next time, I think Zack Polanksi talks a lot of sense, I’m fed up with Labour, they are targeting the wrong people.”

Henri Murison, chief executive of lobby group NPP, told The i Paper he understood the frustration of votes in Warrington.

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“One of the downsides of our heavily centralised tax system is that very little of the tax people pay in Warrington, other than their council tax and that is all pretty much for adult and children’s services pressure, is spent directly by local or regional institutions,” he said.

“It is not specific to the current incumbent as Chancellor that Whitehall isn’t trusted to spend money wisely.

“If any of our national insurance or wider major taxes were retained and spent locally, with fair and transparent transfer mechanisms between wealthy and poorer areas like the new fair funding settlement for local government, then people might actually pay more and see the difference.”

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