Reeves: ‘My budget will match greatest economic moments in Labour history’

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Double glazing giant prepares inflation-busting price rises in response to Budget



The double glazing giant Everest Windows is planning inflation-busting price rises as it braces for higher costs following the Budget.

Everest Windows, which sells ranges of sash and bay windows as well as doors, is understood to be preparing to increase prices by as much as 8.9pc following a review. The changes are expected to come into force as soon as next week and are being made days after the company launched its January sale.

A spokesman for the company said: “While recent Budget changes will impact labour costs across the industry and inflation continues in material costs, we are working diligently to minimise the effect on our pricing while maintaining the high standards our customers expect.

“That said, the likely outcome of our product and pricing review will be that our prices increase by up to 8.9pc, product dependent, in the near future.”

The price increase will add to costs for homeowners seeking to upgrade their houses to make them more energy efficient.

Landlords are under pressure to push through upgrades after Ed Miliband last September said they would be banned from renting out properties that do not meet energy efficiency standards.

The warning over higher costs at Everest comes as concerns mount over the risk of inflation accelerating in the months ahead.

Figures from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development earlier this week suggested that Britain was suffering from the highest price rises in the G7, with prices up 3.5pc in the UK in November. This compared to an increase of just 1.3pc in France and 2.9pc in Japan.

It follows warnings to the Chancellor that she risks stoking inflation following a decision to announce £41.5bn of tax rises on businesses last October.

A recent survey from the Bank of England showed businesses were expecting to put up their prices by 4pc on average over the next 12 months. This was the steepest projected increase since April.

Already, supermarkets including Tesco and Marks & Spencer have warned over the risk of price increases.

Retailers have been disproportionately affected by the Budget because of the Chancellor’s decision to raise the minimum wage and National Insurance contributions paid by employers. Retail is the largest private sector employer in the UK with 2.9m people working directly in the industry.

From April, employers will pay tax at a rate of 15pc on their workers’ pay packets, up from 13.8pc currently. The threshold at which the tax kicks in will also fall from earnings of £9,100 per year to £5,000. Tesco said this would add another £250m to its costs each year.

Everest’s warning over price rises comes less than a year after the window seller collapsed into administration. It marked the second time in four years it was forced to call in administrators.

In 2020, Everest was rescued by Better Capital, the venture capital firm founded by turnaround specialist Jon Moulton in a pre-pack deal. Last April, it filed for administration again and was rescued by rival Anglian Home Improvements, which bought its customer order book, brand and intellectual property.

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Starmer said he had “full confidence” in Reeves and that she was doing a “fantastic job”.

That's her for the chop then?

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Rachel Reeves should quit now, not later this year



I see Rachel Reeves got one of those bottle-hard manicures before her trip to pass round the begging bowl in China. Just as well. Rachel is hanging on as Chancellor of the Exchequer by her Maoist-red fingertips. The bond markets have decided they are not amused that Mrs “fully funded and fully costed” (remember her?) delivered a Budget so bad it would likely kill growth stone dead and make her socialist splurges unaffordable.

Having spent the first few weeks in the job saying in that Foghorn of Doom voice, “We’re all going to die!” and banging on about the Tories’ “black hole”, Rachel thought UK PLC could simply go back and ask for another 30 billion quid on tick to distribute generously to our three-day-week, working-from-Costa public sector. For some reason, the money men aren’t buying it. Reeves’s mantra “security is the change” has morphed into rampant insecurity with panic rising like salt water in a sinking ship. Britain is judged less credit-worthy than Greece and the markets are basically offering us posh payday loans, daily increasing the cost of servicing the interest on our national debt – poised to jump over a staggering £100 billion a year, which would buy you two times the entire defence budget and a wardrobe of Angela Rayner trouser suits in striking seasick shades. But at least Rachel Reeves, as she never stops pointing out, is the first female chancellor, eh?

Rachel is said to be feeling “very depressed” because she can’t see a way out of the bleak economic outlook and the choices are “all s—”. Well, at least she can now empathise with the farmers threatened with losing their family farm, the shivering pensioners, the small businesses shutting up shop, the parents forced to take distraught kids out of private school – all casualties of Reeves’s brand of vindictive student politics. And most of her moronic tax increases won’t really start to bite until April when we will see how much money they actually raise (if any) as thousands potentially lose their jobs and the last multi-millionaire to leave Britain bids adieu to HMRC.

Sir Keir Starmer said that the Chancellor has his full confidence, but initially refused to guarantee her long-term tenure of Number 11 as the pound plummeted against the dollar. Later, Downing Street said Reeves would remain Chancellor “for the whole of this Parliament”. That could mean next Thursday at this rate.

Like the Old Testament God, the bond markets have a rigid sense of good and evil and pleas for mercy from a dimwit whose CV reads like a branch of experimental fiction will go unanswered. Punishment for getting in the markets’ bad books, as Reeves is finding out, is swift and terrifying. Notice her drawn and exhausted appearance at last week’s Prime Minister’s Questions; she looked like she’d seen the ghost of her own ambition.

My Planet Normal co-pilot, the economist and soothsayer Liam Halligan, predicted a few weeks before the general election that if Reeves pursued the usual doomed strategy, trying to tax her way to growth, then “the bond markets will bring Labour to heel”. How right he was. But even Liam couldn’t know how fast she’d mess up. At least Rachel Reeves is the first female chancellor – did she mention that?

Forget lettuce. Reeves shouldn’t stay in her post longer than a punnet of raspberries-on-the-turn. If she had any sense of shame, she’d have resigned yesterday. Her performance has been both mendacious and hopeless. The smoked-salmon offensive in the City while she was in opposition, assuring financiers and entrepreneurs that Labour was pro-business, sticks in the craw like rotting fish. Little did the CEOs who endorsed her realise they wouldn’t qualify as “working people” once their hostess was in government or that they were about to be clobbered with a devastating increase in employers’ NI contributions. Members of the aspirational classes, they were there to be fleeced; their hard-earned cash redistributed to vital causes like bumper pay rises for train drivers, now so well paid none could be persuaded to work overtime at Christmas so festive travellers had to settle for the three worst words in the language: Rail Replacement Bus. But at least Rachel Reeves got to be the first female chancellor of the exchequer.

Allison Pearson

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Ryanair boss Michael O' Leary tears Rachel Reeves a new arsehole...

WARNING: CONTAINS VERY STRONG LANGUAGE