Now Labour MPs get the chop from hairdressers over Government's 'great business rates betrayal'
Barbers and salons are following pubs and have banned Labour MPs from their premises in a growing backlash against Rachel Reeves' Budget.
By EMILY HAWKINS and GABRIEL MILLARD-CLOTHIER
Published: 21:54 GMT, 27 December 2025 | Updated: 10:45 GMT, 28 December 2025
Hairdressers are following in the footsteps of publicans by banning Labour MPs over what they are calling the Government's business rates betrayal.
More than 1,000 pubs have already barred the party's parliamentarians from their premises in a growing backlash against Rachel Reeves' Budget.
Now barbers and salons are doing the same. Firms are fuming after the Chancellor promised to pay for a reduction in bills for smaller firms by hiking taxes on larger properties to 'level the playing field between the high street and online giants'.
But small businesses will only receive a 5p discount on the 'multiplier' used to calculate a final bill – despite pleading for a 20p reduction. And this discount will be wiped out by increases to businesses' rateable values.
Collette Osborne, who runs two Hairven salons in Nottinghamshire, has put up a 'No Labour MPs' sign because she feels businesses like hers are 'desperate and hanging on by a thread'.
Ms Osborne, whose local Labour MPs are Juliet Campbell and Michael Payne, is facing an increase in her business rates bill of more than £10,000 a year.
She said: '[Ms Reeves] promised she would act to protect small businesses and high street salons. I am furious that the Government now seem to have their fingers in their ears.
There is no spare capacity to absorb business rate increases on top of rising wages, utilities, finance costs and Covid debt repayments. So no Labour MPs are allowed.'
British Chancellor Rachel Reeves on Budget Day outside her office in Downing Street in London
Barbers and salons are following pubs and have banned Labour MPs from their premises in a growing backlash against Rachel Reeves' Budget (file photo)
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Emma Vickery, a hairdresser in London, said: 'I am proud to have supported public finances through tax and employment contributions for nearly four decades, but it is becoming financially unsustainable.
Without urgent support or recognition of the challenges faced by small employers, businesses like mine will disappear.'
Toby Dicker, from the Salon Employers' Association, said: 'Our members are all decent, hard-working, kind people – the people who would expect a Labour government, who triumphantly said they would 'make work pay', to support them for being the backbone of the high street. [They] feel betrayed.'