UK economy barely grew between July and September

Andy Crisp, manager of pasta and pizza restaurant Vapiano in Manchester, said he had noticed a slight slowdown in the run up to Reeves’ Budget.

The summer was “a game of two halves”, he said, which finished quite strongly with sales up between 2-3% from a year ago.

However, the week before the Budget he “did see a downturn” in footfall.

“The only thing we could potentially put that down to was it felt like there was a nervousness prior to the Budget coming out as to ‘what does it mean to me? What does it mean to the general public?’

“So it almost felt like people were holding back to find out what the end result was going to be.”