Autumn Budget: Reeves targets job market with skills package November 26, 2025 Rachel Reeves has used today’s Autumn Budget to unveil a sweeping £1.5bn skills package aimed at tackling the UK’s entrenched labour shortages and sluggish productivity. The Chancellor said the country “cannot compete without investing in our people”, pitching the reforms as central to her long-term economic renewal plan. The measures represent the biggest shake-up of [...]
Autumn Budget: Don’t let OBR gaffe mask Labour’s own mistakes November 26, 2025 The OBR's mistake was spectacular but accidental. The same can't be said for Labour, whose Budget missteps will do nothing to shift the economy.
Autumn Budget ‘deeply concerning’ for squeezed hospitality industry November 26, 2025 The UK’s hospitality industry has been disappointed by the Autumn Budget, with no cuts to VAT and no changes to National Insurance. Even a cut to business rates has been described as “too little, too little” as well as something likely to get wiped out by an inflation-linked revaluation of rates next year. “This is [...]
Budget: Octopus boss Greg Jackson hails cuts to energy bills November 26, 2025 Octopus Energy boss Greg Jackson has hailed the cuts to energy bills announced in today’s Budget, as the Chancellor slashed multiple renewable levies. Jackson welcomed the energy bill cuts as a “positive step” as Rachel Reeves described energy costs as “one of the greatest drivers of the rising cost of living”. Reeves said she will scrap [...]
Budget: Kemi Badenoch slams ‘shameless’ Rachel Reeves November 26, 2025 The mood in the House of Commons morphed from rowdy to somewhat tense following the Budget, as Kemi Badenoch launched a series of scathing political and personal attacks on Rachel Reeves. The Conservative leader slammed the Chancellor’s position as “untenable”, and her fiscal announcements as a “Budget for Benefits Street”. Badenoch said: “I hope she [...]
Autumn Budget: Reeves pushes ahead with ‘mansion’ tax November 26, 2025 A mansion tax will be introduced on homes worth more than £2m, Rachel Reeves confirmed, despite warnings from the property industry that the move was fraught with practical difficulties and would lead to a fire sale of high-end homes. The Chancellor ploughed ahead with widely rumoured plans to apply a “high-value council tax surcharge” on [...]
Autumn Budget: Professional services sector dodged ‘damaging’ tax hikes November 26, 2025 The professional services sector breathed a sigh of relief after dodging tax hikes on LLPs in Rachel Reeves’s Autumn Budget. It was rumoured that Reeves was looking to add a layer of tax on limited liability partnerships (LLPs), a move that sparked a flurry of anger from the broader professional services industry, including the legal [...]
Autumn Budget: R&D and AI push faces delivery questions November 26, 2025 Rachel Reeves’ Autumn Budget set out one of the largest public investments in UK research and innovation in decades, with billions earmarked for R&D, AI, and the industrial strategy. UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) will receive £38.6bn, including £9bn for government priority sectors such as AI, quantum computing, and engineering biology. Meanwhile, £7bn is set [...]
Natwest and Lloyds shares soar after escaping Budget tax raid November 26, 2025 Britain’s banking giants have managed to escape a tax raid in the Labour government’s second Autumn Budget. UK lenders have been in the hot seat on the road to 26 November, with Chancellor Rachel Reeves facing lobbying calls across the aisle. But as Rachel Reeves made a £26bn cash grab, which included bookies, landlords and [...]
Autumn Budget: Reeves splurges £12bn on welfare as two-child benefit cap ditched November 26, 2025 The UK’s fiscal watchdog has forecast welfare spending to soar over the next few years after the Labour government ditched plans to reform the welfare state. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which accidentally published its report before the Budget, has said welfare spending will rise by £12bn in the fiscal year 2029-30, when compared [...]