The chairman of one of Britain’s largest retailers has launched a broadside against Labour’s business rate plans – warning that the High Street faces a ‘perilous’ moment.
JD Sports chief Andrew Higginson said botched reforms made by Chancellor Rachel Reeves treated large, so-called ‘anchor’ stores as ‘expendable cash machines’ and threatened their future.
Writing for the Daily Mail, he said: ‘Too many high streets are losing their heartbeat. If the Government continues down this path the results across the retail industry will be unavoidable. More shop closures, weaker high streets and less investment in the future.’
And he criticised a suggestion by Darren Jones – the Treasury minister who is joining Keir Starmer’s Number 10 team – that firms should ‘suck it up’.
Higginson, chairman of the British Retail Consortium, was the only FTSE 100 boss to sign a letter before last year’s general election backing Labour.
But he has since become one of the Government’s most outspoken critics in the retail sector, warning that the Chancellor’s employer National Insurance hike is costing jobs.
Warning: JD Sports chairman Andrew Higginson said botched reforms by Chancellor Rachel Reeves treated large so-called ‘anchor’ stores as ‘expendable cash machines’
Now, he has stepped up his alerts over the impact of business rate changes that are designed to reform a long-hated system, but are instead piling more pain on to anchor stores that are seen as major shopping destinations for high streets.
Bricks-and-mortar shops have long complained that the system disadvantages them compared to online rivals.
The reforms attempt to address this by increasing taxes for larger premises – intending to catch out warehouses used by online vendors. But retailers argue the changes will hit larger stores.
Higginson said: ‘What makes the present moment so perilous is that the Treasury might add yet more fixed costs – taxes – to businesses already stretched to breaking point.’
He added the ‘broken’ system of business rates ‘won’t be fixed by shuffling costs between different-sized retailers’, and said that roughly 4,000 larger stores employed a third of the retail workforce and drove visitors to high streets.
‘Yet the Government could soon tax these anchors even more, as if they were expendable cash machines,’ Higginson said.
‘When an anchor shuts its doors the damage ripples outwards. The independent cafe loses its customers. The bus service is cut back. The street grows darker and less safe.’
Last year, minister Mr Jones defended the tax increases facing big businesses and, when asked by an interviewer if they should ‘suck it up’, said: ‘Yes, it’s been designed in that way.’
Higginson described such language as ‘ignorant rhetoric’.
DIY INVESTING PLATFORMS
AJ Bell
AJ Bell
Easy investing and ready-made portfolios
Hargreaves Lansdown
Hargreaves Lansdown
Free fund dealing and investment ideas
interactive investor
interactive investor
Flat-fee investing from £4.99 per month
InvestEngine
InvestEngine
Account and trading fee-free ETF investing
Trading 212
Trading 212
Free share dealing and no account fee
Affiliate links: If you take out a product This is Money may earn a commission. These deals are chosen by our editorial team, as we think they are worth highlighting. This does not affect our editorial independence.
This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .