Budget 2024: What do we want Rachel Reeves to do for consumers?

The Budget is a statement that the Chancellor gives to Parliament once a year on behalf of the Treasury, providing economic forecasts but importantly, what the Government will do or change for the nation's finances. The first Budget of the new Government is on Wednesday 30 October.

We've officially told the Treasury some of the things we'd like to see included to make your financial lives easier – many of which we have been campaigning on for some time. Martin wrote to the Chancellor with these asks after she took office earlier this year and has discussed these issues with her in more detail since.

Here, we've focused on the issues we've campaigned on, with changes we think can be made soon, with big consumer impact, and can manage the Chancellor's concerns about public finances.

On housing… cancel the Lifetime ISA withdrawal penalty for ALL first-time buyers

The Lifetime ISA (LISA) scheme has helped many people build up a deposit towards a first home. Yet LISAs haven't kept up with the times, and many young people, especially in south-east England, now find themselves facing a penalty for using those LISAs on exactly what they were intended for.

• The LISA is a product 18- to 39-year-olds can open to start saving towards their first home. You can save up to £4,000 a year and get a 25% bonus from the state.

• To qualify for the bonus, you must use a LISA to buy a first home, which must cost under £450,000 (or for retirement).

• If you still buy a home – exactly what the LISA was intended for – but find yourself priced out and have to buy one over £450,000, you face a 25% penalty to access your money. This means you lose roughly 6.25% of your OWN money in the process – we think that's unjust.

In the 2023/24 tax year, savers were fined around £15 million of their own money when withdrawing funds from their LISA – the largest annual amount since LISAs launched in 2017. We estimate that around £1.8 million of that was taken from savers who still bought a first home, just one over the limit.

We've asked the Chancellor to reduce the withdrawal penalty from 25% to 20% for those still using the LISA to buy a first home over the limit, which would mean they lose the Government bonus, but none of their own money.

We've also called for the LISA's maximum property price to be uprated, as it's been frozen since launch in 2017, despite average house prices increasing 32% since.

On benefits… remove the Carer's Allowance cliff-edge

Carer's Allowance has a 'cliff-edge' – if those claiming it make a single penny over the £151 a week earnings limit, they lose the entire benefit. This is different from most benefits, such as Universal Credit, where the amount you get decreases as your earnings increase – we believe that's unfair.

Carers do an incredibly important job and save the NHS billions of pounds. Despite this, 44% of working adults who provide care for more than 35 hours a week are in poverty, according to the charity Carers UK.

Because of a disconnect in the system, some carers are caught out by the cliff-edge and are still paid the allowance for months or years after they lose entitlement to it. Then they are asked to repay £100s or £1,000s later down the line, adding to their stress and financial hardship.

Ahead of the 2024 General Election, the now-Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer told us he was committed to reviewing the issue, and in the last few weeks, the Government has indeed announced an independent review into the delayed demands to repay Carer's Allowance – a positive step, but we still want to see the cliff-edge scrapped as soon as possible.

On benefits... change Child Benefit rules which unfairly penalise single-income families

• Child Benefit is a monthly payment for anyone with parental responsibilities for children under the age of 16 (or up to 20 in full-time education).

• Once one parent or guardian's income hits £60,000, they start having to pay back Child Benefit through the tax system, until at £80,000 they have to pay the whole lot back.

• However, that means that two parents each earning £59,999 can have a combined income of nearly £119,998 before they have to start paying it back, whereas a single parent, for example, starts losing it with a household income half that.

Child Benefit currently penalises families who rely on a single income – and removes some of the benefit they might see if they got a higher wage, worked more hours etc. That includes single parents (including those whose partner has sadly died) – but it also happens to families where a parent simply can't work due a disability or illness, or where they have to care for a child with these challenges.

Our campaigning led to changes to Child Benefit earlier this year under the previous Government, which raised the thresholds for paying it back (previously between £50,000 and £60,000) – so this now affects fewer families. But the systemic problems haven't yet been solved: we proposed raising the thresholds as a stopgap measure while wider reforms to the income assessment are considered. The last Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, promised to consult on that, but because of the change in Government, it never happened.

While the change in threshold is welcome, we've asked the Chancellor to consider changing the assessment for Child Benefit to household income so that some single-income families are not unfairly penalised.

On childcare… rename the Tax-Free Childcare scheme to help 800,000 families missing out

• Tax-Free Childcare is a savings scheme which offers many households up to £2,000 per child per year to put towards childcare costs (or £4,000 if the child is disabled).

• Eligible parents can get a 20p top-up from the Government for every 80p they put into a Tax-Free Childcare account, which they use to pay for childcare.

Yet the name "Tax-Free Childcare" is confusing as the scheme has nothing to do with tax, nor does it make childcare tax-free. Around 800,000 of the 1.3 million families estimated to be eligible are not claiming this help towards childcare costs – and we think that the name is putting them off checking if they can get it.

We did some research to see if an alternative name, which better describes the scheme, could help some of these people to claim. Nearly four times as many parents who pay for childcare for a child under 11, but who hadn't heard of the scheme, understood what our example, "Help to Pay for Childcare", was over the scheme's actual name. HM Revenue & Customs' own research also tested different names and recommended "Working Parents Childcare Top-Up".

We've asked the Chancellor to take steps to rename the scheme, which could help more eligible parents to take advantage of it.

Make the Winter Fuel Payment eligibility less restrictive

It's been well publicised that the Government this summer announced it is stopping the universal Winter Fuel Payment for all pensioners, and instead is only making payments to pensioners on benefits and Pension Credit – which itself is massively underclaimed.

Martin has said that this is "too narrow a group" and has called on the Chancellor to consider other ways to target more struggling households – such as pensioners in council tax bands A to C – and to make sure those who struggle to apply for Pension Credit are helped to claim.

Tackle the hardship faced by mortgage prisoners

Trigger warning: Suicide. There are nearly 200,000 mortgage prisoners who have been trapped in very high-interest mortgages since the 2008 financial crisis, after the state sold their loans to uncompetitive, mostly unregulated lenders. Martin has himself funded research from the London School of Economics and Political Science, which came up with some possible, costed solutions to free some of these borrowers – yet the previous Government kicked it into the long grass.

The situation facing mortgage prisoners has taken a huge financial, mental and physical toll, and they have faced repossessions, poverty and, tragically, even suicide. We'd like to see the Chancellor finally tackle the extreme hardship these people face through no fault of their own.

If you think you are a mortgage prisoner, our I'm a mortgage prisoner – what can I do? guide has information and help for some who can get it. You can also download our Mental Health & Debt booklet, which has information on what you can do and organisations that can help.