Britain’s high street banks are set to unveil stronger profits as they face the prospect of being targeted for a tax hike in the Budget .

Lloyds Banking Group , HSBC, NatWest Group and Santander will report their third-quarter financial results next week.

The announcements will come on the same week that Chancellor John Healey will deliver his autumn Budget statement, on Wednesday October 28.

Banks are widely speculated to be a target with Mr Healey thought to be considering increasing the surcharge on profits from 3% to 8% – reversing a tax cut for the sector introduced by former Conservative chancellor Jeremy Hunt.

The boss of Barclays , which kicked off third-quarter results season on Thursday, said tax hikes would be “bearable”.

Chief executive CS Venkatakrishnan, known within the bank as Venkat, said: “We are already a bank which makes a lot of our money outside the UK so this is not a question of a financial hit to us – it’s bearable.”

It came as the bank reported pre-tax profits £2.3 billion, an…