No10 hits back as Dyson boss slams ‘ignorant’ and ‘spiteful’ Budget

Sir James Dyson has branded Rachel Reeves’ first Budget “ignorant” and “spiteful” as he accused her of “killing off family businesses, individual aspiration and economic growth”.

The British entrepreneur, 77, hit out at the Chancellor following the government’s first fiscal event last week, writing in the Times newspaper that Labour “hates British families”.

He cautioned that the government hiking inheritance tax (IHT) on farms and family-run businesses would be “the death of entrepreneurship” and ruin “incentives to start” new firms.

It came after Reeves tightened up IHT on business property, which will see family firms passing down assets valued above £1m paying a 20 per cent rate from April 2026.

This sits below the standard 40 per cent rate, and also applies to farms worth over £1m.

Inventor and designer Sir James, one of the UK’s richest men, wrote: “What is it about British families that Labour hates so much? 

“In a single ignorant swipe at aspiration, Rachel Reeves is killing off established family businesses, and any incentive to start new ones, with her 20 per cent ‘family death tax’, levied each time a family business passes a generation.”

He argued that “family firms are the lifeblood of the economy” with some 5m such businesses creating around 14m jobs and supplying “hundreds of billions in taxes”.

The Dyson UK website also states that the businessman now owns the “largest farming business in the UK, with 36,000 acres of high yielding farmland across Lincolnshire, Oxfordshire, West Berkshire, Somerset and Gloucestershire”. 

‘Labour has shown its true colours’ – Sir James Dyson

The Brexit-backing businessman, who invented the Dyson vacuum cleaner, added: “Reeves killing off business property relief… means that British families are landed with an unpayable tax bill every time an owner dies… the very fabric of our economy is being ripped apart. 

“No business can survive Reeves’s 20 per cent tax grab. It will be the death of entrepreneurship. Think of the jobs for “working people” that will be lost – or never created.”

He continued: “Labour has shown its true colours with a spiteful budget. It detests the private sector and has chosen to kill off individual aspiration and economic growth.”

Farmers have continued to protest what has been dubbed Labour’s ‘tractor tax’, with the Chancellor insisting the changes would only affect a limited number of individuals.

Reeves has admitted she was “wrong” to say before the election that she did not need to raise taxes and stressed: “There’s no need to come back with another Budget like this.” 

She argued that “last year only a very small number of farms would have been paying any additional inheritance tax”, adding: “If the farm is owned by two people, you have £3m essentially tax-free and the tax rate is a 50 per cent discount… [with] ten years to pay it.”

But Baroness Minette Batters, the former president of the National Farming Union (NFU), said 70 per cent of farms would be affected, telling Times Radio farmers were “reeling”.

She said: “My phone has been buzzing constantly and they’re bewildered, angry.

“I think we need a lot of clarity about how this has been put together, the impact assessment and to see if this can be changed because it will have enormous consequences.”

However, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman insisted the government had “taken a balanced approach” to the Budget and been “upfront and honest with the British public about the dire state of the public finances the government inherited and… the difficult choices and trade-offs needed in order to restore economic stability and lay the foundations for growth”.

While home secretary Yvette Cooper earlier argued that the Budget would fix the UK’s dire public finances and that “we can’t just keep ignoring those problems”.