By David Milliken, Sachin Ravikumar and Andy Bruce
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s new finance minister Rachel Reeves announced the biggest tax increases in three decades in her first budget on Wednesday, saying she had to repair the country’s broken public services with heavy spending.
Businesses and the wealthy faced the brunt of the tax hikes and Reeves also paved the way for higher borrowing for investment to speed up an economy hit by the 2007-09 financial crisis, Brexit, COVID and soaring energy prices.
The former Bank of England economist – who told parliament of her pride at being the first female Chancellor of the Exchequer – vowed no repeat of former Prime Minister Liz Truss’s unfunded tax cuts which caused a bond slump in 2022.
Investors were initially unfazed by the Labour Party’s economic programme. But government bond prices fell later as the scale of the planned spending became clear and investors scaled back their bets on Bank …