British ISA scrapped

masonic

(for the avoidance of doubt, those last two bits of quoted text are from the article, not my comments)

poseidon1

AJ Bell CEO, Michael Summersgill, says: “The UK ISA was a political gimmick that was doomed to fail in its objective of boosting investment in UK Plc. The new government deserves huge credit for consigning this ill-conceived idea to the policy dustbin and will hopefully now take a more sensible, long-term approach to ISA reform than their predecessors, focused on simplification for the benefit of consumers.”

Echo's my sentiments exactly, and I suspect other leading  S&S  ISA providers were likewise in quiet agreement.

friolento

Good decision to scrap it.

I don't think I would have invested in it myself.

DeLaSole

masonic said:

hallmark said:

I'm not too bothered it's been scrapped as I was never convinced it'd happen.  It's definitely concerning how comfortable this Government is breaking pre-election pledges so soon after gaining power.

Was there an actual pledge to introduce it?

Thought there were just "no plans" to drop it, which means nothing.

Hi masonic,

Agreed. Pre-election, Moneyweek (and likely others) pointed out that the UK ISA didn't feature in the Conservative manifesto, nevermind Labour's, as well as highlighting rather negative industry sentiment to the product. Both manifestos were released after the UK ISA consultation had ended, whereas City Week got its 'no plans' quote from a Labour spokesperson the month prior.

Best wishes

TheBanker

Seemed like a bit of a gimic to me, and the £5k limit would probably have made it not commercially viable or needed high fees. 

I think we do need to encourage investors to invest more in the UK, but this isn't the right way to do it. 

dcs34

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-09-05/reeves-should-kill-all-the-isas-except-the-british-isa

Offers a slightly different perspective to this thread's seeming consensus.

masonic

dcs34 said:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-09-05/reeves-should-kill-all-the-isas-except-the-british-isa

Offers a slightly different perspective to this thread's seeming consensus.

Merryn is a big fan of Investment Trusts (nothing wrong with that of course, I like them too) and is on the board of several, so not surprising she'd be in the camp for a product like this that didn't discriminate too much between UK listed shares.

Though I haven't used one for over a decade, I don't think abolishing cash ISAs would go down well...

A significant number of households would not meet the recommended criteria (emergency fund, time horizon etc) to begin investing.