City welcomes reports Healey will reverse cuts to cash Isa allowance in the budget – business live

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news What to expect from John Healey’s first budget: who wins, who pays? Budget 2026: six charts that reveal the economic realities facing the chancellor City experts are welcoming reports that chancellor John Healey will scrap plans to slash the annual cash Isa allowance from £20,000 to £12,000 a year. According to the Financial Times, Healey had concluded that this is the wrong way to persuade people to invest more in stocks and shares.

“Rachel Reeves’ ISA reforms were a car crash, lamented by most of the retail investment industry, who criticised the complexity they would add for little consumer benefit, and building societies, who warned they would increase mortgage costs. Given the Prime Minister’s main focus is on easing cost-of-living pressures, we shouldn’t be surprised the Cash ISA cut is set to be unceremoniously ditched. “While the central aim of encouraging more people to invest for the long-term was the right one, the route Healey’s predecessor chose to achieve this was painfully convoluted, hardening the border between short-term saving and long-term investing and adding overwhelming complexity – not to mention a tax charge – into the system in the process. “There is also a lesson here about how policy is made. The industry has already spent an inordinate amount of time and resource preparing its…