Hospices and care homes face a budget crunch thanks to Chancellor Reeves’ misjudged hiking of National Insurance and the minimum wage. It has been estimated that it will cost children’s hospices an extra £5million to provide vital care, while one charity boss predicts hundreds of care homes will be forced out of business.

The Wilf Ward Family Trust, looking after vulnerable people in Yorkshire, predicts Labour’s budget increases will cost it an extra £1.4million next year. Employing 890 staff to look after 290 people who cannot help themselves, they will be hard hit by the employers’ NI hike of 15%.

Analysis by the Nuffield Trust found the extra NI contributions for employers will cost the adult social care sector more than £900million next year, dwarfing the £600million extra cash promised by Labour to local authorities.

In total, the care home sector faces extra costs of around £2.8billion.

Across the nation, hard-pressed families who pay for the care of their loved ones are already facing a leap in nursing home fees. Family homes are having to be sold to cover the costs stretching up to as much as £80,000 and more a year. The budget announcements are not the only inflationary pressures on these fixed costs.

Ed Miliband’s reckless net zero crusade means the cost of energy in the UK is already among the highest in the world. Decarbonising our economy before an adequate new low-carbon infrastructure is in place ensures high bills for years to come and care homes are among the biggest consumers.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies recently revealed that green levies will have to rise by an average £120 per household in order to meet the Government’s clean energy target. This can be multiplied manifold for homes providing care to the elderly and vulnerable.

On top of this, councils across the country are already struggling with the costs of social care. Partly due to financial mismanagement and legal liabilities, many councils are on the brink of bankruptcy with Birmingham being one of the most prominent to crash.

The knock-on effect is felt most by the care sector. Birmingham Hospice has had to slash in-patient beds and lose 45 full-time positions.

“We’ve recently seen the worst financial results for the sector in 20 years, with hospices facing a collective deficit of £77million,” said Toby Porter, chief executive of Hospice UK.

As revealed in the Daily Express yesterday, charity Together for Short Lives surveyed 20 of 35 children’s hospice organisations across the country and estimated that Rachel Reeves’ increase in Employers’ NI Contributions means an average of £134,000 extra in staff bills next year, with the total cost of care rising by £4.9million.

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Self-funded private care homes face a similar grim future. Functioning outside the umbrella of the NHS, they nevertheless provide a key social function but receive few public funds, depending mainly on the money paid by residents and their families.

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised to cap these exorbitant costs, but this has become yet another failed commitment from the Tory party, while Rachel Reeves has scrapped any intention of enacting a cap, leaving many families facing a challenging future.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the Labour party is now heaping extra costs on to the care sector, all to pay for above-inflation pay rises for civil servants and train drivers. Indeed, Labour’s Britain is fast becoming a two-tier society in which hospices and care homes face increased costs to fill tax coffers in order to reward cossetted public sector workers.

As Britons wake up to this cruel reality, it’s little wonder that Sir Keir Starmer faces a wipe-out at next May’s council elections. Already plunging in the polls after just five months, Starmer is failing to deliver a fairer, kinder society with his economically incoherent chancellor hitting the frontline of our caring services hardest.

It’s Labour that is fast becoming the “nasty party” by not thinking through its November tax grab and its impact on those doing the toughest job of looking after us at our most vulnerable. Shame on Starmer and Reeves.