Rachel Reeves final chance to spare businesses from the potentially fatal blows unleashed in last October’s Budget 

Price of rights

RACHEL Reeves has one last chance tomorrow to spare businesses from the potentially fatal blows unleashed in last October’s Budget.

If she won’t U-turn during her “Spring Statement”; on measures like the growth-crushing jobs tax before they take effect in April, she MUST do so on the ruinous workers’ rights package.

This hard-Left raft of extra powers for unions and employees — guaranteed from Day One in a new job — looks likely to cripple the private sector firms the Government is banking on to generate prosperity.

Firms already buckling under the highest-ever taxes and some of the planet’s priciest energy.

Ministers claim these powers will ENHANCE growth by making workers more secure about their own spending.

That is a desperate stretch, directly contradicted by the Government’s own impact assessment.

Employers who risk being sued for unfair dismissal by a brand new recruit will obviously be far more cautious about hiring.

And turbo-charged union powers are simply a blueprint for a return to the 1970s when strike-mad thugs ran bleak Britain into the ground.

The Chancellor cannot just rely tomorrow on trimming the public sector.

It will remain vastly overstaffed, a gargantuan drain on the public purse.

Labour’s vow to hugely bolster workers’ rights will prove an act of self-harm just as disastrous as record high taxes.

If nothing else Ms Reeves should bin that.

Keir’s steer

KEIR Starmer is right up our street over making life easier and cheaper for drivers.

It matters to millions of voters.

The PM has found £1.6billion to fix potholes. Excellent. But even that is a fraction of what is needed nationally.

Everywhere we look, lethal craters go untended for months, even years.

And when it comes to exorbitant insurance, rip-off parking fees and fines and forecourt profiteers, we need action to follow his warm words.

We’re delighted the Pumpwatch-style Fuel Finder scheme, showing all drivers the cheapest fuel in their area, IS happening.

But why must it wait till next year? That’s a full decade since Flying Eze first backed it.

Why do the wheels of Government grind so slowly?

Test his Ed

SO Britain will “cut its emissions”; using solar panels made in coal-powered, mega-polluting China, possibly by slaves.

Only in the mind of Ed Miliband — a man blind drunk on ideology — could this make sense.

But then we increasingly suspect the Energy Secretary cares far less about the world reaching Net Zero than about Britain alone doing so.

And him getting the “credit”;.