HSBC has reported pre-tax profits of $9.6 billion for the third quarter, up 32 percent on the same period last year. Its profits for the first nine months of 2026 reached $29.2 billion, up 26 percent. Workers facing another winter of high energy bills can see perfectly well who’s coming through the crisis with money to spare.
The TUC published the figures on 27 October alongside its demand for higher bank taxes. According to the union body, Britain’s four biggest banks have made more than £200 billion in profits over the past five years. Barclays had announced its own bumper results the previous week.
The next day, the chancellor’s decision to double the bank surcharge was welcomed by the TUC but the figures in its own releases expose how little ground ministers have conceded.
The Conservatives cut the surcharge from 8 percent to 3 percent in 2023. Doubling that 3 percent rate takes it to 6 percent. On the TUC’s account, the government hasn’t even fully reversed the Tory cut.
Nevertheless, TUC general secretary Paul Nowak offered ministers warm praise:
“The TUC has long called for banks to pay their fair share. At a time when millions are struggling to get by, taxing banks’ bumper profits to cut energy bills is plain common sense. The chancellor has made a good start by doubling the bank surcharge – next he should be prepared to extend it and raise it if profits remain sky high.”
Before the Budget, the TUC had set out considerably higher rates. It estimated that restoring the surcharge to 8 percent would raise £9 billion over four years. A 16 percent rate would raise £24 billion, while 35 percent would raise £60 billion. These were estimates for an additional tax on banking profits above £100 million.
The TUC wanted ministers to fund a social energy tariff that could reduce bills by up to £559 a year for households on low and middle incomes. The actual measures announced to cut energy bills have been much more modest: a previous removal of VAT from [check] and today’s removal of the standing charge from gas, which will be paid for by higher volume users through energy companies charging more per unit. These changes are welcome and make a real difference, but still leave many people in the cold.
Meanwhile, the TUC estimates that the 2023 surcharge cut has already cost the Treasury £6 billion. Conservative ministers handed banks that tax reduction just as interest rates were reaching their peak. Bank owners benefited; the Treasury collected less.
Who produces the money?
The argument over what banks can afford starts well after workers have produced the wealth.
Marx explained how employers take surplus value from workers: workers produce more new value than employers pay them in wages. Employers keep the difference and divide it with other capitalists. When a business borrows money, its owners pay the lender interest out of the proceeds. Bankers collect part of the wealth that workers produced elsewhere.
Banks also collect interest and fees directly from households. Workers pay mortgage interest and service debts out of their wages. Bank shareholders receive their returns through these different routes, while bank employees do the daily work of administering loans and payments.
Describing extraordinary profits as a windfall can obscure how routinely bank owners collect money from other people’s work. Their profits don’t become harmless when they fall back to an ordinary level. Yet Nowak ties his call for further increases to profits remaining exceptionally high.
Workers have every reason to welcome a lower energy bill. An extra few hundred pounds can mean more heating, better food or less debt. But the TUC leadership turns that immediate benefit into praise for ministers who have left part of the previous bank tax cut intact.
That’s the reformist bargain on display: union officials ask ministers to redistribute some profits, then present a limited concession as evidence that the government is moving in workers’ interests. Bank owners retain control over lending and investment throughout.
Banks, the state and imperialism
Lenin traced how leading bankers and industrial capitalists joined their businesses together, concentrated control in fewer hands and invested capital abroad. Through these relationships, a financial oligarchy could influence production far beyond the banks themselves.
Britain’s banking giants belong to that international system. Their owners earn money across borders, drawing on the work of people who have no say over the banks’ decisions. Imperialist states defend their capitalists’ overseas interests through diplomatic pressure, economic coercion and military force.
The TUC identifies Trump’s continuing war against Iran as a cause of rising costs. But its Budget response discusses the war chiefly through the difficulties facing British families and firms. Iranians appear only as the people whose country provides the setting for Britain’s economic troubles.
“As Trump’s illegal war in Iran continues to cause havoc with the global economy and drive up costs, the Prime Minister and Chancellor have started to give families and firms much-needed breathing space,” the TUC’s Nowak said.
“The TUC has long called for banks to pay their fair share. At a time when millions are struggling to get by, taxing banks’ bumper profits to cut energy bills is plain common sense.”
US rulers are waging war against another country. Iranians face the destruction directly; workers elsewhere face further pressure on their living standards.
British employers and their employees don’t share a single interest just because both pay for energy. Employers defend their margins by squeezing wages, cutting jobs or raising prices. Workers defend their wages and jobs against those employers. Yet the TUC calls for the government to help business more, for the good of the economy.
“…ministers should have beefed up support for manufacturers struggling with crippling energy costs.”
Ministers may help both with particular costs, but they haven’t abolished the conflict between them, or exploitation of the workers, by doing so.
A capitalist government can also tax bankers more heavily while continuing to defend capitalist rule. Ministers need households to keep buying necessities and businesses to keep trading. They can make one section of the owning class contribute more towards those costs without handing workers control over production or finance.
The same distinction applies to public investment. The TUC welcomes investment through the National Wealth Fund, asks for more help for manufacturers, and warns about possible cuts to departmental capital budgets. Workers depend on functioning public services. Employers also depend on public infrastructure and a workforce healthy enough to work. Ministers can spend money on both while preserving the employers’ power over workers.
In this Budget, according to the TUC’s own figures, ministers have increased the bank surcharge while leaving it below its former rate. Bank owners still control their businesses and collect the profits. The TUC leadership has supplied the applause for a tax rise that doesn’t even finish undoing the Tory cut.
