Autumn Budget 2025: Live updates as Chancellor Rachel Reeves prepares to deliver Labour’s money grab budget 

Experts warned that months of speculation fuelled by Treasury leaks and the Chancellor herself has ‘flatlined growth’, with investors, consumers and homebuyers all delaying key decisions

Helen Miller, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), said Ms Reeves now risks ‘increasing taxes that are bad for growth’. She told Times Radio on Monday:

If you do lots of small things, often our smaller taxes are particularly badly designed and therefore you can end up increasing taxes that are bad for growth.

Investors will be nervous if they see a list of tax increases, but don’t quite trust how much revenue it will bring in.

Economist Mohamed El-Erian said the ‘chaotic’ Budget preparations had already damaged the economy. The former head of investment giant Pimco told the BBC:

There are a number of data points that suggest the prolonged speculation has flatlined growth. You see this in the latest retail sales figures, which were the first decline since May. You see this in the decline of business confidence.

The economy has paid a price for a process that has been delayed, has been full of speculation and that has seen the Government send conflicting signals. A Budget has a journey and a destination. If you make the journey complex, if it seems chaotic, then your destination becomes harder to reach…it has made hard choices even harder.

The warning echoes comments at the weekend by former Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane, who said the ‘fiscal fandango’ of the past months had caused ‘paralysis’ among businesses and consumers.

We need a decisive action that puts to bed any notion of further tax rises.

Paul Johnson, former director at the IFS, told Sky News:

You have seen thousands of people take money out of their pensions because they were worried about potential changes. You have had an effect on the housing market. There has been an effect on business investment. This is real-world damage.