By The Telegraph (World News) | Created at 2024-11-19 07:50:11 | Updated at 2024-11-25 17:43:18
6 days ago
Retailers have warned they have been left with choices that lead to “no growth” after calculating that Rachel Reeves’s Budget has left the sector facing a £7bn bill.
Dozens of Britain’s biggest retailers have warned the Chancellor that her plans to hike National Insurance will cause staff to be laid off and shops to be shut.
Nick Stowe, chief executive of Monsoon and Accessorize, said retailers had been left with the choice of either protecting staff numbers of cancelling their investment plans.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We’re trying to protect that staff number and it’s about choices in how we protect it. For us it means passing on some of those cost increases in terms of increased prices.
“It also means we’re probably going to have to divert investment that we would have made in growing our store base into protecting the stores that we have and the employees that we have.
“It’s about making choices. None of those choices are a great path forward for us, none of them lead to growth.
“These are forcing us to do things that seem to be entirely counter to the Government’s agenda in terms of growing the economy and growing sectors like ours.”
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