THERE is an “overwhelming” case for raising taxes on banking profits, said the TUC after NatWest became the latest high street bank to report a bigger-than-expected jump in earnings today.

The British banking group made an operating pre-tax profit of £4.3 billion for the six months to the end of June, up 20 per cent on the same period in 2025 and more than the £4.1bn that most analysts had been expecting.

NatWest follows Barclays and Lloyds Banking Group in beating analysts’ expectations for profit growth over the first half of the year.

TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said: “The big banks are coining it in from higher interest rates while working people are struggling with mortgage misery and higher bills.

“Andy Burnham has rightly been straight out of the blocks with measures to help households with the cost of living. But with no real end in sight to the Iran war, energy prices will rise further, which is why the government will need to go further in the months ahead.

“The Prime Minister has a clear opportunity to show he’s on the side of working people by taxing banks to cut bills – he should take it. It’s the right thing to do, and banks can easily afford it.”

The union federation wants the government to increase the banking surcharge to pay for a social energy tariff that brings down energy bills by up to £559 a year for those on low and middle incomes.

Currently, the surcharge is an additional 3 per cent corporation tax on the profits of banking companies above £100 million.

The TUC is calling for the government to increase the surcharge to raise up to £60bn over the next four years. 

But even raising it by the “bare minimum” of reversing the Tory cuts and setting it at 8 per cent would raise £9bn over four years – enough to fund its social tariff proposals.

Growth across NatWest’s retail, commercial and wealth management arms saw it increase its income generation by 11 per cent year on year.

It also reduced its cost-to-income ratio by 2.8 percentage points year-on-year, having made around £250 million worth of gross cost savings over the first half.