Marks & Spencer CEO Stuart Machin has made six demands of John Healey ahead of the budget, including scrapping extended producer responsibility and the deposit return scheme.
Machin said in an article for The Daily Mail on Saturday that he had written to the Chancellor directly “to set out what needs to change” in the autumn budget.
His demands include undoing the rises in employer National Insurance contributions introduced in the 2024 budget; getting a new food & drink deal with the EU; protecting the Saturday job; and making sure supermarkets don’t subsidise a business rates discount for pubs.
The planned UK DRS, due to be implemented in October 2027, was “patently ridiculous”, Machin said. Consumers would have to return containers to reclaim a 20p deposit on each one “despite already paying your council for collections”, he said. “And stores need to rip out shelves to make space for monstrous recycling machines. Retailers are spending tens of millions just to set it up, and will pay millions more every single year to run the scheme.”
EPR was “sold as investment in recycling, but it’s nothing of the sort”, according to Machin. “It’s a tax of almost £2bn on food and drink… In April, M&S had to pay an extra £40m in one go. Scrap it, and shoppers will feel the difference.”
To protect Saturday jobs, Healey needed to ensure weekend shifts were not treated as low-hours contracts under the Employment Rights Act, Machin said.
He said a food & drink deal with the EU would be “common sense”. “Cut the red tape with our nearest neighbours, so the European food we love costs less to bring in, and our brilliant British farmers can sell more abroad. Every month it’s delayed, farmers and shoppers pay the price.”
On business rates, making supermarkets pay for a promised 20% cut for pubs and live music venues would be “paying for a cheaper pint by loading costs on to the weekly shop”, Machin told the Chancellor.
Machin also branded the last two budgets a “crushing disappointment for customers, colleagues and businesses”.
“Now there’s a new Chancellor and a new chance,” Machin said. “The prime minister has promised ‘hope again’ and given us ideas for the next Parliament. But the Chancellor needs to restore hope among British businesses, and tell us what he’ll do now.”
Jason Tarry slams ‘warehouse tax’
Fears had been mounting among retailers over a possible tax raid on warehouses to fund the business rates cut for pubs, with John Lewis chairman Jason Tarry also warning Healey against such a move.
However, Healey is reported to have ruled out a warehouse tax at the weekend.
It came after Tarry wrote in an article for The Telegraph on Friday that it would be “piling more costs on larger retailers through a so-called ‘warehouse’ tax on online retailers”.
Tarry pointed out the high-value business rates multiplier introduced in last year’s budget was already “intended to level the playing field between online and physical retail”.
“The problem is it applies to a far greater number of high street shops than warehouses,” Tarry said. “In our case, the higher charge applies to just 18 distribution centres but more than 200 John Lewis and Waitrose stores. Almost 80p in every pound is levied on our shops, with around 20p on our warehouses.”
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