JEREMY Hunt’s Budget tax increases will kill off businesses and hamper economic growth, according to the vice-president of the Confederation of British Industry.

He told GB News: “This is the worst thing that could have happened, increasing corporation tax now from 19% to 25%, almost one third in one swoop.

“This is the first increase in corporation tax we’ve had in decades and when George Osborne reduced corporation tax down to 20%, and 19%, it was going to go down to 17%.

“He actually had an ambition to take it down to 15%. In fact, the current Chancellor Jeremy Hunt wanted corporation tax to be as low as 15%. Instead, what he did was exactly the opposite.”

In a conversation with Alastair Stewart, he said: “The record has shown when the corporation tax was reduced, our tax take actually went up.

“To try and get this £18 billion pounds extra per year by increasing corporation tax is so short-sighted.

“It is literally killing the goose that lays the golden egg, because what you’re doing is you’re hampering the growth.

“You’re hampering our recovery from the worst crisis in the Second World War.”

He added: “What’s really important is your hampering inward investment from abroad, having the high rate of corporation tax sends out a bad signal.

“We’ve seen that with AstraZeneca deciding to invest in Ireland next door, 12.5%, half our rate now and the Chancellor, Prime Minister say ‘oh, we’ve got the lowest corporation tax headline rate compared with the rest of the G7’.

“But what about the OECD? We’re now above the OECD average. We need to be competitive because as an economy, we have not done well.”

He said: “Average UK household income has actually stagnated for 15 years, if you look at our growth in the UK in real wages.

“If you look at the whole list of countries with Lithuania at the top of the list, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, we’re right down, UK way down the list – I’m sorry, we shouldn’t be there.

“We need to grow this economy. We need to be bolder.”

Lord Bilimoria said: “If Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng had taken the trouble and care to have the OBR to prepare a report to backup their plans, the debt to GDP ratio, which is going to be almost 100% five years from now, would not be that much higher than Jeremy Hunt’s plan, but they didn’t do that.

“So we’re now stuck in a situation where our taxes are going up, when we should be putting taxes down…but please don’t get me wrong, there’s some good things in the budget as well.

“The replacement of the super deduction, which I was worried about, will be taken away with the increasing corporation tax, a double whammy.

“That has not happened, in that they have, as Rishi Sunak promised me one to one, they put in a 100% tax relief for investment in plant and machinery and technology and I’m grateful for that.”