Rachel Reeves bows down to officials with hidden tax list that impacts millions of Britons

Rachel Reeves has been accused of bowing down to Treasury mandarins’ by axing policies long hated by officials in a bid to raise tax revenue.

The Chancellor is understood to have been handed a document with a list of options to raise money, such as means testing winter fuel payments, increasing fuel duty and suspending the .

Abolishing inheritance tax agricultural property relief (APR), lower pension relief for high earners and applying inheritance tax to pensions are all featured on the list, it is understood.

Dennis Reed, director of over-60s campaign group Silver voices, said: “Treasury mandarins must be slapping each other on the back as they have at last found a Chancellor they can manipulate to implement their to-do list, rejected by her predecessors.

“The cruel decision to scrap winter fuel payments for most older people was always near the top of the list, considered but rejected by the .

“Worryingly, scrapping the has also been strongly pushed by the Treasury in the past, and officials are no doubt whispering the policy into the Chancellor’s ear right now.

“Rachel Reeves needs to consider the full impact of Treasury policies on poorer households before she rubber-stamps the mandarins’ agenda. It would help if Labour had plans of its own to help struggling pensioner households”.

Reeves has already axed the for up to 10 million pensioners, changed APR and applied Inheritance tax on pensions from April 2027.

These suggestions were put to the previous Government in 2022 following Liz Truss’s mini budget to raise money.

It is understood that officials eventually stopped pushing the to implement them, and then the then Government began cutting taxes.

A source said: “These are the stealth levers the Treasury loves—fuel duty hikes, tweaking pension tax relief, scrapping VAT breaks.

“They say it makes for ‘good’ tax policy, but in the real world it’s politically explosive, and ministers avoid them like the plague.”

Farmers are facing an inheritance tax raid following changes announced at the October budget – a suggestion which also appears on the Treasury’s document.

Mo Metcalf-Fisher, director of external affairs at the Countryside Alliance said: ” It’s really alarming to think that at a flick of a pen, our family farms were thrown under the bus and with that, our nation’s food security threatened.

“The inevitable fall out from the budget over the tax hike on farmers, which seems to intensify daily, could have been so easily avoided if Rachel Reeves had carried out the necessary consultation with relevant rural stakeholders before taking to the floor of the House of Commons.

“Instead, it appears the Chancellor has relied on the word of bureaucrats, whose Whitehall offices and thinking is often so far removed from the realities of rural life and the complex reality of agriculture. It is not too late to rethink this policy and find a way forward that protects family farms for the long term”.

The Daily Express attempted to use the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the document of revenue raising options but it was denied “to protect the integrity of the policymaking process”.

This is despite the Treasury acknowledging in its refusal that there is an “inherent

public interest in transparency and accountability of public authorities”.

But it added: “We consider that there is a strong public interest in protecting

information where release would be likely to have a detrimental impact on the

ongoing formulation and development of policy.”

Elliot Keck, head of campaigns at the TaxPayers’ Alliance, warned the extent of policymaking which happens behind closed doors does not always inspire confidence among the public that end up dealing with the consequences of them.

He said: “While ministers obviously need to occasionally discuss proposals confidentially, demystifying the process would give taxpayers greater assurance as to the logic behind what can often seem bizarre and inexplicable decisions.

“Politicians should make a greater effort to come clean about the way in which policy is formulated.”

A Treasury spokesman said: “We inherited a £22bn fiscal black hole from the previous government, meaning we had to make the right decisions needed to fix the foundations of the country and restore desperately needed stability to the public finances.”

“Kick-starting economic growth is the number one mission of this Government as we deliver on our Plan for Change. Over the coming weeks and months, the Chancellor will leave no stone unturned in her determination to deliver economic growth and put more money in people’s pockets.”