ANDREW NEIL: Labour’s Budget appears to be like worse by the day because the small print reveals recent horrors on each web page

There’s an old Westminster rule of thumb that Budgets badly received on the day are usually winning better reviews by the weekend.

Rachel Reeves can take no comfort from this convention because, in her case, the opposite is happening.

The Chancellor’s first Budget was immediately greeted with a cacophony of criticism which shows no signs of abating. If anything, the attacks are mounting as people trawl through the small print and find fresh horrors on every page.

The broad contours of its failures are already well-established. It does nothing for economic growth or business investment, even though Keir Starmer pledged that boosting both would be the central mission of his Government.

It increases taxes by a record £41 billion a year, despite repeated Labour assurances that no major tax rises were necessary as its spending plans were fully costed and fully funded.

It envisages tens of billions more in borrowing even though Reeves regularly promised she would be a prudent and fiscally responsible Chancellor. The debt markets have already taken fright.

It takes a special stupidity to pump up public spending by £74 billion over the next five years, borrow an extra £142 billion to help pay for it – and end up with a slightly smaller economy at the end of the decade than the independent Office for Budget Responsibility was forecasting before you opened the fiscal taps.

Yet that is what Reeves has managed to achieve. As a result, living standards – as measured by disposable income – are predicted to grow almost as slowly until the end of the decade as in the previous decade.

It is a dismal prospect for the ‘working people’ Labour claims to champion (even if it can’t quite define them). But delve into the detail and for many ordinary folks it’s much worse than that.

The steep rise in employers’ National Insurance contributions (NICs) is a dagger to the heart of Britain’s care homes.

The NHS and the rest of the public sector – the only sector Labour really cares about – is exempt. But not care homes, which are largely private.

The rise in employer NICs from 13.8 per cent to 15 per cent is bad enough. But Reeves cut the pay threshold where it kicks in from £9,100 to £5,000, which hits the lower-paid and often part-time workers care homes employ.

Care England reckons higher NICs and the inflation-busting increase in the minimum wage will add £2.4 billion in annual labour costs for adult social care providers, forcing many out of business.

They currently employ 1.7 million people. Job losses and poorer service are inevitable. One group in North Yorkshire, which runs five residential and nursing homes for the elderly and disabled, has 210 staff and has an annual wage bill of £5.3 million. It says its yearly labour costs will rise by another £360,000 due to the Reeves Budget alone. It has no idea how it will cope.

These extra costs come after years of being squeezed of cash by local authorities who themselves were hardly flush.

The Chancellor says she’s provided the sector with an extra £600 million to help with rising costs. But the money goes to local authorities, who might not pass all of it on and covers social care for children as well as adults.

The care homes will likely end up with a pittance in compensating funds. The sector is heading for a Labour-made crisis.

GP surgeries will also be in trouble. They provide services to the NHS but operate as private businesses. So they will have to pay the extra NICs. The BMA says the impact will be ‘monumental’.

One modest practice in Northumberland believes its yearly costs will rise £40,000 post-Budget. It does not generate big enough margins to afford that.

At a time when GP services are already stretched and the government wants them to do more, the Budget has just made their life that much more difficult. Patients will suffer.

Charities are another casualty of the Reeves tax grab. They too will have to pay higher NICs. The voluntary sector employs over 1 million people, many part-time. The lower NICs threshold will drag many into the tax net just as it does in social care.

The Budget is calculated to cost charities £1.4 billion. The National Council for Voluntary Organisations says its members will have to reduce staff, cut salaries and scale back services for those who depend on them. Remember that next time you hear a Labour politician parading their care and compassion.

The RSPCA says its labour costs will rise by £1 million a year post-Budget. Well-known charities from Age UK to Marie Curie are up in arms. What is the point, where’s the justice, asks one charity administrator, in loading costs on to nurses delivering end-of-life care in hospices? We await Labour’s answer.

Small businesses are also reeling. The Institute for Fiscal Studies calculates the NICs increase will add nearly £800 to the cost of employing someone full-time on the minimum wage.

The OBR says although employers will initially pick up the tab, the cost will eventually be passed on to workers in the form of lower pay and fewer jobs.

The anguish among small business folk is palpable. On Thursday a hair salon owner was close to tears on live TV while explaining how the Budget might make him go under. He’s far from alone.

Labour loyalists sent on to the airwaves to put lipstick on this pig of a Budget seem surprised by the backlash, which is revealing in itself.

It underlines the fact that, from Starmer-Reeves down, not one senior figure in this Government has ever run a business, ever had to meet a wage bill each month, ever had to cope with rules and regulations that threaten the existence of their enterprise.

Nor does Labour seem to know much about farming. Though only last year it promised it would do no such thing, Reeves is levying 20 per cent inheritance tax on farms when they pass from one generation to another.

This measure sounds the death-knell of the family farm, which requires intergenerational care to succeed, and undermines food security, the social fabric of rural communities and the environment – all for an extra few hundred million in revenue, which some minister will squander before lunchtime.

Some of this Budget pain might be justified if there was some great prize at the end of it. But there is not.

The economy will continue to limp along in its usual insipid way; real wages will barely rise; the NHS will gobble up another £22 billion in only two years – taking the health and social care budget to over £200 billion a year – with no noticeable improvement in outcomes.

Millions will be squandered to satisfy Ed Miliband’s green zealotry; business investment will be crowded out by public spending, soon accounting for nearly 45 per cent of our economy; inflation will rise; and interest and mortgage rates will stay higher than they should due to Labour’s borrowing binge and spending splurge.

The markets – like that hairdresser – already realise this is a clunker of a Budget, which is why the pound has been sliding and those from whom the government borrows are indicating they want a risk premium in the shape of a higher interest rate if they are to lend so much.

Reeves tried to assuage market fears pre-Budget about her profligacy. But she’s been rumbled.

Whether she learns her lesson is another matter. The extra spending she’s just unleashed peters out in a couple of years. If the OBR is right and economic growth is still anaemic at that point then she will be back with more tax rises to feed the public sector’s voracious appetite.

I don’t want to scare you. But there will be plenty more Halloween Budgets to come.