Britain’s best-known entrepreneurs have attacked Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ “spiteful” budget and warned it could trigger a recession.
Billionaire inventor Sir James Dyson said the hike in national insurance on employers will be the “death of entrepreneurship”.
Pimlico Plumbers founder Charlie Mullins, who left the country to avoid Labour’s tax raid, said it was the “worst budget I’ve ever known”.
“It’s every business owner’s worst nightmare, this budget,” he told Times Radio. “It’s a budget to trigger a recession.
“The raid on national insurance is going to kill businesses.
“No business at this moment can afford that.”
Ms Reeves used her first Budget to make changes to inheritance tax, including reducing reliefs for agricultural and business property from April 2026 in a bid to raise more funds for the public sector.
For assets over £1 million, inheritance tax will apply with an effective rate of 20%.
But the measure has faced a backlash from the agriculture sector, which warned it will stop family farms being passed down from one generation to the next.
The rate of employers’ national insurance rises by 1.2% and the level employers start paying the tax on each employee’s salary is being reduced from £9,100 a year to £5,000.
Sir James, founder of technology firm Dyson, who owns a commercial farming business, wrote in The Times: “Make no mistake, the very fabric of our economy is being ripped apart.
“No business can survive Reeves’s 20% tax grab. It will be the death of entrepreneurship.”
He added: “Every business expects to pay tax, but for Labour to kill off homegrown family businesses is a tragedy.
“In particular, I have huge empathy for the small businesses and start-ups that will suffer.”
Meanwhile, companies owned by overseas families, and private equity-owned and publicly-listed firms that are “about maximising short-term profit” will not pay the same taxes, he said.
