Autumn Budget 2026 Representation

The Prevention Dividend

Better for People. Better for Public Services. Better for Taxpayers.

Submitted by:    Taxpayers Against Poverty

Contact:               Tom Burgess, Chief Executive

Date:                    8 September 2026

The Proposal

Taxpayers Against Poverty (TAP) welcomes the Government's ambition to build a Preventative State. The Autumn Budget provides an opportunity to begin turning that principle into practical economic policy.

Britain spends enormous sums responding to problems after they have become crises: homelessness, poor health, problem debt, unemployment, educational disadvantage and financial insecurity.

Much of this spending is essential. But government should ask a second question:

What investment today could prevent these problems arising tomorrow?

TAP calls the economic and social return generated by successful prevention The Prevention Dividend:

Costs avoided + prosperity created

We are not proposing a major new spending programme. We are asking HM Treasury to establish a practical framework for identifying, testing and measuring where preventative investment can improve lives while reducing future public expenditure and increasing economic prosperity.

Why Prevention Matters to the Treasury

Poverty does not operate within departmental boundaries.

·       High housing costs can lead to debt.

·       Debt can damage health.

·       Poor health can affect employment.

·       Falling income increases housing insecurity.

·       Children growing up within that instability may experience poorer educational outcomes.

Government then pays through different budgets: welfare, NHS services, housing, education, debt support and potentially temporary accommodation.

Each department sees a different cost. The family experiences one interconnected crisis.

There is therefore a structural weakness in conventional government accounting: the department paying for prevention is often not the department receiving the eventual saving. A council may invest in better housing while the NHS benefits from improved health. Education spending today may reduce future welfare or criminal justice expenditure. Transport investment may cost one department while increasing employment, productivity and tax receipts elsewhere.

The immediate cost is visible. The long-term benefits are dispersed across government.

HM Treasury is uniquely placed to see across those departmental boundaries.

What We Are Asking the Treasury to Do

1. Introduce a Prevention Test

Major spending decisions and policies should increasingly be assessed against their preventative impact.

The Test should ask:

• Will this increase or reduce poverty and financial insecurity?

• What future public expenditure could it prevent?

• Which department pays now and which may benefit later?

• Could it improve employment, health, housing or economic independence?

• What additional economic activity and tax revenues could result?

• What is the likely return over five, ten and twenty years?

The objective is not another bureaucratic process. It is to ensure that government considers the cost of not preventing a problem.

2. Establish a Small Treasury Prevention Function

HM Treasury should establish a small Prevention Unit, or designate an existing Treasury team, to coordinate this work across government. Its role would be to identify promising preventative investments, develop consistent methods for measuring cross-departmental benefits and evaluate whether earlier intervention genuinely produces better long-term value. It would add one important question to Treasury decision-making:

"What future costs does this investment prevent?"

3. Launch Prevention Investment Pilots

Government should start small and establish evidence.

Initial pilots could include:

·       Homelessness: intervene before households lose their homes and compare the cost with temporary accommodation and subsequent support avoided.

·       Warm homes: improve inefficient homes and measure changes in energy bills, health and household financial resilience.

·       Debt: intervene at the first signs of serious financial distress rather than after debt becomes unmanageable.

·       Early years: test targeted interventions in areas of entrenched disadvantage and measure longer-term outcomes.

·       Employment and transport: improve connectivity where poor transport limits access to employment and measure effects on jobs, earnings and benefit dependency.

Each pilot should establish a baseline, measure outcomes across departments and undergo independent evaluation.

The Economic Opportunity

The Prevention Dividend is not simply about saving public money. Its larger potential is creating prosperity.

·       A healthier population can be more productive.

·       Better education can increase lifetime earnings.

·       Reliable infrastructure expands labour markets.

·       Affordable housing improves mobility and financial security.

·       Lower essential household costs increase disposable income.

·       Successful businesses create jobs and tax revenues.

That is why the Prevention Dividend has two components:

Expenditure avoided + prosperity created.

This principle can be applied across government.

TAP's wider policy programme demonstrates the approach: Connected Britain connects people with employment and regional opportunity; Green Prosperity combines lower energy costs with warmer homes and skilled jobs; housing and My Home Station link affordable homes with transport and employment; tax reform seeks to reward productive work and investment; and enterprise policies can help people build income and economic independence.

These are different policies, but they share the same objective:

Create the conditions in which more people become financially secure and fewer people require government support.

From Cost This Year to Value Over a Generation

If the initial programme demonstrates value, TAP proposes that HM Treasury progressively develop a National Prevention Account.

This would seek to measure:

Investment in prevention

against

future public expenditure avoided

plus

additional economic value created.

Government already undertakes long-term appraisal of infrastructure, pensions, borrowing and investment. Preventative investment deserves similarly rigorous analysis.

The aim is to move government thinking:

from cost this year to value over a generation.

Our Budget Ask

TAP asks the Chancellor to make four initial commitments in the Autumn Budget:

1. Make poverty prevention a cross-government objective.

2. Ask HM Treasury to develop and pilot a Prevention Test and establish responsibility for prevention analysis within the Treasury.

3. Launch a small number of measurable Prevention Investment Pilots during 2027.

4. Report the results and develop proposals for measuring a National Prevention Dividend ahead of the next Spending Review.

These measures can initially be developed largely through existing analytical capacity and programmes. The immediate ask is therefore primarily about changing how government evaluates investment, rather than committing to substantial new expenditure.

Where pilots demonstrate credible net Exchequer savings or wider economic returns, Government can then consider scaling successful interventions.

Conclusion

This proposal is not about weakening the safety net. People experiencing hardship must always receive support.

It is about having a greater ambition: fewer people should need crisis support because fewer people reach crisis point. That means moving from treatment towards prevention, from departmental costs towards whole-government outcomes, and from managing poverty towards creating prosperity.

The question for HM Treasury should therefore not simply be:

How much will prevention cost?

It should also be:

How much is our failure to prevent poverty already costing us?

Finding that answer—and acting upon it—is The Prevention Dividend.

Tom BurgessChief ExecutiveTaxpayers Against Poverty

Supporting document available: The Prevention Dividend – Why Preventing Poverty Is Better for People, Better for Public Services and Better for Taxpayers

For more information and media enquiries: Tom Burgess, CEO, Taxpayers Against PovertyEmail: media@taxpayersagainstpovery.org  Website: www.taxpayersagainstpoverty.org.uk

About Taxpayers Against PovertyTaxpayers against Poverty is a UK-based independent advocacy group dedicated to tackling poverty, inequality, and economic injustice TAP seeks to influence national and local policy by promoting practical economic proposals that have a positive effect on reducing poverty and unnecessary financial hardship using a direct approach to decision makers and other influencers.

TAP was founded by the late Rev Paul Nicolson and is led by Tom Burgess, author of From Here to Prosperity, a new political agenda for a sustainable economy and greater social justice, which proposes taxing wealth more and income less. TAP is part of Real Agenda Network, a not-for-profit social enterprise bringing together campaigns, research, media and public engagement to tackle poverty, inequality and the barriers preventing people from thriving, this includes Compassion in Politics which seeks to bring more honesty, respect and compassion into political life; The Progressive Policy Unit (PPU) which develops practical, evidence-based proposals on poverty prevention, economic fairness, taxation, public services and social wellbeing as well as Purple Shoots which tackles poverty, unemployment, social isolation and financial exclusion through encouraging and building entrepreneurship and independence, through microfinance.