Bridget Phillipson has claimed that Labour’s ‘number one mission’ is economic growth as alarming new figures show 1600 businesses will close this month.

The squirming Cabinet Minister claimed the new government is prioritising growth in this week’s Budget, which economists fear will amount to one of the biggest corporate tax raids of the modern era.

But figures show there has been a surge in the number of business owners shutting up shop amid widespread concern Chancellor Rachel Reeves will raid capital gains tax in an attempt to raise £40 billion.

More than 1,600 company directors have chosen to wind down their businesses so far this month, the highest number of closures this year and more than double the amount for the whole of last October, according to notices filed to The Gazette.

There has been a significant rise in business closures since August, when Sir Keir Starmer warned the party’s first Budget would be “painful”.

But the Education Secretary appeared to brush off the concerns this morning as she claimed the UK’s “best days are ahead of us”, promising the Budget would seek to “invest in the long-term prosperity of our country”.

Speaking to Sky News’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips programme she said: “We face some tough choices but we need to restore stability back to the economy.”

She added: “But the choice of this Budget is, ‘do we invest in the long-term prosperity of our country, or do we accept we’re on a path to decline?’

“I think our best days as a country are ahead of us, and this Budget will fix those foundations so that we can get our country back on track.”

The Cabinet Minister refused to say whether Labour’s pledge not to raise income tax, VAT or national insurance will remain in place for the next five years.

Asked if the pledge applied for the whole of this Parliament, Ms Phillipson said: “We think taxes on working people are already too high, because that’s what they faced under the Conservatives.

“I can’t speculate on either this Budget or on successive budgets to come, you’ll understand that, and if I were to do that, I would get in a lot of trouble with Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor.”

Former Bank of England governor Mervyn King said the Government appearing to box itself in by the pledge on national insurance, VAT and income tax is “very unwise”.

Lord King, when asked by Trevor Phillips if Labour was unwise to stick with those general election promises on tax, said: “Very unwise. I think the previous government was irresponsible to cut national insurance contributions when that was only remotely feasible, given unrealistic projections for public spending.

“And I think the Opposition didn’t need to make a commitment not to reverse that. And honestly, I think that would be much better now just to say to people, this is where we are, be completely straight with people say, yeah, we made that pledge in the heat of an electoral battle, it was a mistake, we regret it, and we’re going to unwind that.

“We’re going to put national insurance contributions back to where they were, because without that, we won’t have the money to support the NHS and other public services.”

He added the “big challenge” in the Budget “is to demonstrate that the amount (Chancellor Rachel Reeves) intends to borrow is compatible with a stable, falling debt-to-income ratio at the end of this Parliament”.

Ms Reeves is set to unveil a significant increase to employers’ national insurance by as much as two percentage points as well as making a cut to the earnings thresholds at which employers start making national insurance contributions.

The measures are set to raise as much as £20 billion, which would represent “one of the biggest tax raising measures of modern times”, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

Anna Leach, the chief economist at the Institute of Directors, said there is “huge frustration and huge disappointment” among business leaders ahead of the Budget, who feel Sir Keir “said he understood businesses, but clearly doesn’t”.

She added: “How can we be positive that the Government will be interested in actual stability rather than cheap political wins?”

The anticipated raid on capital gains tax, which could see business owners as well as shareholders taxed at a higher rate, along with changes to the non-dom regime, have already been blamed for pushing millionaires into leaving Britain.

The Chancellor is expected to prolong the freeze to income tax thresholds, a so-called “stealth tax”, which would drag millions of people into paying higher tax rates, as well as ending inheritance tax exemptions for businesses and agricultural land.

She will also rewrite fiscal rules to unleash a borrowing spree of up to £50 billion, a move that experts say will lead to interest rates staying higher for longer and risk pushing up the price of mortgages.