High Street Chiefs Ask for Cheaper Young Workers
Executives from Tesco, the Co-op, Costa Coffee, Marks and Spencer and Sainsbury’s met the chancellor at Downing Street this morning. They asked him to raise the point at which employers start paying National Insurance from £5,000 to £6,000, blaming last year’s cut for falling numbers of young and part-time staff.
The threshold was lowered from £9,100 to £5,000, which pulled large numbers of part-time and entry-level jobs into employer National Insurance for the first time, and the retailers are asking for only part of that back. Helen Dickinson of the British Retail Consortium put the sector’s position in cost terms: “after whacking up retailers’ taxes by 20% in two years, including an extra £6.5bn in new employment costs, any new costs will be paid by consumers at the till and make it harder for retailers to create jobs”. They also want relief on business rates. One source close to the meeting said: “It felt like they were listening.” What is asserted rather than shown is the causal link to youth unemployment — no figure for jobs lost was put on the table, and the retailers did not provide one. The Budget is on 28 October, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies has already said a steady-as-she-goes Budget is not available to this chancellor.