Exodus of the millionaires will leave us ALL poorer: ROBERT HARDMAN

Peter Ferrigno has a number of clients who are planning to go away during next month's half-term break – and, thus far, they only have one-way tickets.

They will decide when, or indeed if, they are going to bother returning to Britain on October 30. For that is the day that Chancellor Rachel Reeves unveils her Budget plans for filling the £22billion 'black hole' that she claims to have found in the public finances.

And, given Labour's unceasing rhetoric about piling fresh taxes on the very wealthy, many of Mr Ferrigno's clients may not be coming back.

He is a senior tax adviser at Henley & Partners, the international relocation experts. His clients are financially savvy, top-end taxpayers – among the 1 per cent who routinely pay 30 per cent of the Government's income tax receipts. Many of them also live international lives and are extremely mobile, a factor which Ms Reeves and her commissars do not seem to have factored into their sums.

For the juiciest turkeys are not going to sit waiting for Christmas. And when the wealthy disappear, Ms Reeves does not just miss out on the extra tax income she was expecting – she also loses the taxes they were previously content to pay, but will pay no more.

A lot have gone already. Many are among the 75,000 'non-doms', people from all over the world who had chosen to park themselves and their fortunes in the UK, for multiple ­reasons, not least a sense of stability, world-class education, culture and the fact that they would not be taxed on their wealth beyond these shores.

Last year, alone, they paid £9billion in tax to the Treasury (so it says itself) and have invested much more in terms of the people and services they employ. They were already restless after the last Tory government reduced the number of years they could stay in the UK.

This week, they heard a jubilant Labour conference roaring their approval as Ms Reeves went ­further: 'We will crack down on the non-dom loopholes.'

So, guess what? They are already packing their bags.

Nor is it a case of 'cry wolf'. ­Yesterday's Guardian carried a report from Treasury insiders warning that Ms Reeves's plan will not just raise zero money, it could leave Britain significantly worse off. Former Bank of ­England chief economist, Andy Haldane, told LBC the same.

So the question is: will Ms Reeves be sensible – or tribal?

The canny rich are not waiting to find out. Given Labour's pledge to slap inheritance tax on all their worldly goods, many non-doms are now on the move.

Many British wealth creators are doing the same. All that lost tax equates to umpteen hospitals, schools and regiments without funding – leaving the rest of us to make up the shortfall. In recent days, I have talked to both billionaires and centi-millionaires (worth hundreds of millions) who will be gone by October 30.

'You can't have growth without wealth creation. Thatcher and Blair understood and created a culture of excitement so lots of entrepreneurs beat a path to the UK,' says one.

'Now that's all over. Why wait to be taxed on your worldly assets when you can go elsewhere and not be treated punitively?'

No violins will play. These are hardened business people. Yet, they are still leaving with heavy hearts. Many feel they are about to be punished to prop up a bloated, belligerent British public sector.

In recent days, the Government has caved in to another whopping £9billion pay rise for the public sector (including a basic £69,000 for train drivers) while doing nothing to dampen Westminster predictions of hikes in both capital gains and inheritance taxes. It is the latter which is the final straw. 

'I must have paid £100 million into the system over the years but they're not getting any more because Starmer is bankrupting the country,' says Charlie Mullins, founder of Pimlico Plumbers.

He has now relocated to Spain while he sorts out the paperwork for moving to Dubai. 'You should incentivise wealth creators, not penalise. Starmer is a reverse Robin Hood, who steals from the ordinary people to give it to the illegals and people who don't contribute a thing to the economy.'

To which Labour will no doubt respond: 'Good riddance.' Except that Sir Keir Starmer's stuff about making the 'broadest shoulders' bear the burden is nonsense if those same shoulders are reclining comfortably 2,000 miles away.

Using data drawn from its 55 offices worldwide, Henley & Partners says that Britain is about to lose more millionaires than any country except China. Stuart Wakeling, the head of its UK ­operation, says the three most popular destinations for those leaving the UK are Switzerland, Dubai and – nearest and easiest –Milan. So I have come to the ­latter to take a look.

Near the ultra-fashionable Brera district, I find The Wilde, a chi-chi new £3,000-a-year private members' club close to completion. Built in a spacious villa, previously the home of fashion mogul Santo Versace, it is the brainchild of London-based real estate veteran Gary Landesberg and ­private equity firm Three Hills.

The former chairman of ­London's famous Arts Club, Mr Landesberg already has a committee of 23 working through applications from across the ­fashion, media, culture and, of course, finance sectors.

With a huge rooftop bar above four floors of both fine and contemporary dining, club rooms, bars, a dance floor, library and garden, the club has more than 200 works of art ready to be installed ahead of next month's opening. Elsewhere in the city, a new outpost of London's Soho House is expected to open in the next year or two.

Mr Landesberg says he will never leave the UK himself but knows numerous worried wealthy who are doing just that.

'Our international crowd are transient and the big worry is inheritance tax. Also, London feels less safe now whereas Milan is compact and good for families. Just follow the schools.'

It's break time at The British School Of Milan and the playgrounds are full of lively, polite children switching from English to Italian and back again.

Now more than 50 years old, the school is in such high demand that it is about to move to a larger site. It boasts the highest IB (International Baccalaureate) scores in Italy and its 775 pupils are international with plenty of Italian household names (heiress Allegra Versace was here) plus plenty of Brits. I drop in to meet the headmaster, Simon Lockyer.

'There is a huge confidence in British education and the fact that the vast majority of our staff are British,' he tells me.

But even he has been ­surprised by the sudden upswing in ­interest and applications from Britain since the election – up by 15 per cent.

Fees are cheaper than most ­London day schools. Nor is there any chance of Rachel Reeves slapping on 20 per cent of VAT.

I talk to Bill Thomson, Italian head of UK estate agents Knight Frank. He has been in Italy for more than 30 years and says he has never been busier with a surge in requests for houses in the €5million to €15million bracket.

'When I started, we saw a lot of nice British aristocrats with floppy hats looking for the dolce vita and a nice villa in the 'real' Italy. Now, those days have moved on and buyers are more urbane and financially driven. The demand is in the cities – Rome, Florence, Venice as well as Milan.'

He, too, says inquiries from the UK are up 15 per cent since the election and they split 50:50 between Brits and UK-based non-doms. 'They all have a clear view of what they want and they want to do it quickly, which is an estate agent's dream.'

In a handsome apartment with a superb view over Milan's castle, I meet part-Italian, part-American, part-British jewellery designer Nicholas Lee Hamilton, 36. His company, Plah Jewelry, has just won a major international prize and he says that he now has more British clients than ever.

'They used to come here on shopping trips and stay in the smart hotels but now they have places here,' he says as he shows me his latest collection.

He ­prefers Milan to London or Paris, he says, as 'France is always on strike and Milan just feels safer than the other two'. Some of those same clients, no doubt, will be among those beating a path to the door of Giuliano Foglia, founder of top law firm, Foglia & Partners. He has seen a 20 per cent spike in requests for advice from the UK, most since the election.

'We could see exactly what happened in London happening here in Milan,' he says. 'People used to think Italy was unstable but now we offer a full exemption of non-Italian-based assets from ­inheritance and gift tax and, unlike much of Europe, we give full ­recognition of trust law.'

The UK, he adds, faces a double threat. Not only could it lose the super-rich who are currently on the books, there will also be those who won't even look at Britain in future. 'There is a constant ­movement of high net worth ­individuals,' says Mr Foglia.

'There were always countries they looked at and the UK was always one of the best – like Monaco. Personally, I believe that people who were contemplating a move have already eliminated the UK from the list.'

He points to the appeal of Italy's annual 'flat tax' for wealthy ­foreigners, a ploy to lure disenchanted 'non-dom' millionaires away from the UK in the wake of Brexit. The Italians even have a nickname for it: the 'empty ­London' tax.

Originally fixed at €100,000 per year, it has proved so popular that Italy doubled it just last month, not that €200,000 seems to have made any great ­difference to ­levels of interest.

For those facing the prospect of paying extra millions to Rachel Reeves, what is an extra €100,000 to the Italians?

Walk through the centre of Milan and you sense a prosperous buzz. Whereas London's Oxford Street feels tired and tacky, the big ­Milanese shopping precincts such as the majestic 19th-century ­Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II feel in rude health.

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Milan, home to the Italian stock exchange, is slowly growing from a big city into a 'world' city, like London or Paris.

Two years from now, it will host the Winter Olympics. Those who remember the way in which ­London seemed on top of the world in that halcyon Olympic-cum-Jubilee summer of 2012 will note a similar spring in the step of Milan. All of which helps explain why Peter Ferrigno's clients will be abroad over half-term, when Reeves unveils her Budget.

'If my clients decide to take their money elsewhere, they want to be able to show they were out of the country before any new rules came in,' he says.

Henley's Stuart Wakeling points to a typical client – an entrepreneur at a stage of life when he wants to sell up and retire. If Labour decides to crank up capital gains tax from 20 per cent to match income tax – at 45 per cent for a higher earner – then that entrepreneur will just go.

'I know one person worth £20million who is ready to pay £4million in tax. But if it's £9million, he is off. So Britain, instead of making £4million, will get nothing.'

Nor are we just talking about what Labour would call 'the super-rich'. One of Ferrigno's ­clients is looking to sell a business for £3million and live off that for the rest of his life. It is actually no different to the state-paid ­pension pot of a senior civil servant or council executive.

That public servant, earning £180,000 a year, can expect a two-thirds salary payout of £120,000 a year for life. In the private sector, that would require a £3million fund, given that the rough rule of thumb for private sector folk is that £1million of pension buys you an income of £40,000.

Moreover, the worker from the state sector has a bomb-proof pension guaranteed by the taxpayer. The private pension is at the mercy of the markets.

As Charlie Mullins puts it: 'We now have a war between public servants and the public. It's two-tier economics. Starmer has alienated the real working class.'

Labour spin doctors are busy denying that there will be a ­stampede for the exits. The ­evidence which I am looking at suggests otherwise.

Henley, for instance, has fielded record inquiries from the UK, up 69 per cent in the 12 months to August, and people are flocking to sign up to its wealth conference in London next month.

'I am just one adviser,' says ­

Peter Ferrigno. 'But if all the ­people who have talked to me decide to go, that is hundreds of millions of pounds not going to the Treasury,' he says.

'As one client has put it to me: 'You've seen the small boats ­coming in one direction. Now watch the small planes going the other way'.'