You can't quibble, says pub crowd

A pleasant spring evening, and two young professionals from the advertising business are having a drink after work in a pub on the edge of a beautiful garden square in Kensington.

It is the Scarsdale Tavern, a place with a reputation for attracting a notably wellheeled clientele. The two men act like friends, but have diametrically opposing political views. Simon is on the Left, Steve on the Right, and what one would naturally expect is a predictable set of views about Gordon Brown's Budget. Great news, he's helping the NHS, bad news, he's putting up taxes: the age-old political divide.

To an extent that is just what happens. But scratch the surface, and something more surprising lurks beneath - that despite the cynicism, despite all the complaints from everyone who will soon be feeling the pinch in their pay packets, people are a lot more willing to pay for a better health service than one might have imagined.

The Scarsdale is exactly the sort of place where the Chancellor's victims are to be found, middle-income earners and above, people who go to the pub and expect to see breaded lobster tails on the menu.

Simon Redican is 35, a media planner living with his costumemaker wife in Blackheath. Despite his salary - somewhere around the £80,000 mark - he says half jokingly: "Don't put me down as middle class." Given such sentiments it is no surprise that he has some stoutly socialist views. "If people want better public services - transport, health, education - they have got to pay for it," he said.

"This Budget is a bit of a watershed. If they put taxes up and people react positively, then it is a mandate to think about rejigging all taxes at the next election. If people will swallow one per cent on National Insurance they are accepting the fact that you have to put up taxes to get better services. It is realism - somebody has to pay for it."

His colleague Steve Bignell, 30, is a TV buying director who earns around the same salary and lives with his speech therapist wife and their 18-month-old twins in Acton. His view of the Budget is rather more scathing: "It is a tax rise plain and simple," he said. "I feel I'm Middle England, and I'm being pinched quite hard."

His wife recently went back to work three days a week and like many people in his situation he reckons that whatever money she earns goes straight into childcare. They are, he says, "doing okay", but no better.

For all the financial pressure it may cause him - and despite the fact that he has private health insurance through his job - he finds it difficult to condemn outright the Chancellor's decision to put up taxes to pay for the NHS.

"It is a high-risk strategy that Gordon Brown has taken on," he said. "He has got two years or so to prove that it has been successful, otherwise they may experience a backlash. To turn a juggernaut like the NHS around is a huge task.

"It's very risky. But if the NHS performs well, I think people will accept it. I think the Chancellor has a strong approval rating. He has now put his head on the block. He has asked for more money, and he has got it. Now they have to deliver." From the Left-wing end of the political spectrum Simon had his own doubts about whether time would deliver a favourable verdict. He said: "Nobody ever thinks the NHS does really well. In advertising language, it is a distress purchase. People don't say, 'I'm ill, this is fantastic'."

Yet he at least had faith in the Chancellor. "In my working life he has delivered stability to the country," he said. "I trust him: it's a gut instinct. He seems dour enough to be good with money, unlike myself."

Perhaps none of this should come as a surprise: perhaps the British public will always be reluctant to criticise a Budget that diverts money to doctors and nurses and hospitals.

City analyst Craig Greaves, 31, is a New Zealander, and saw it all with the dispassionate eye of an outsider. "The Budget will be popular because the NHS is top of everyone's list," he said. "A lot of people say they are willing to pay more tax for a better NHS."

That does not stop people having qualms. Shelley Doughty, 29, is a university admissions officer who lives in Earl's Court with her boyfriend, a civil servant. She said: "I've just had experience of the NHS. I broke my wrist. To be honest, it was a fairly dreadful experience. It took five hours to be treated, and then I had to fight for physio."

She earns around £23,000 and is not too worried about the effect of the Budget on her take-home pay. "It's only a small percentage," she said.

Yet she still questions whether the money will make a difference. "It is one thing if I thought it would improve the NHS. But it is throwing money at the problem and expecting it to be improved. If you can improve the services I don't have a problem with paying for it."

Vanessa Hogg, 29, from Fulham, is another Scarsdale customer who works in advertising. She earns well above the national average but does not begrudge a bigger slice of it going on the NHS.

"I think it is quite good that someone has bitten the bullet," she said. "If we want a better NHS someone is going to have to pay for it. The NHS needs more money - it is a good thing that it has got more. If it genuinely goes into the NHS then I don't mind paying it. I admire Gordon Brown because he has faced a difficult situation head on. He has done something which probably should have been done a long time ago."