Big companies are lining up to warn about jobs

A host of Britain’s best-known businesses have warned that jobs could be cut, recruitment reduced and prices pushed up as they absorb hundreds of millions of pounds in extra costs imposed on employers in Rachel Reeves’ Autumn Budget.

Allison Kirkby, chief executive of BT, said customers could be charged more for services as the telecoms group looked to offset a £100m hit from rising National Insurance contributions in the next financial year.

Kirkby said: “We will look at accelerating some of our cost transformations, we will continue to pursue additional workforce productivity measures and we will of course look at the pricing of our products and services.”

The former state monopoly employs 118,000 people and its total staff costs for the first