Stephen Burns, chief executive of Hollywood Bowl, has criticised Labour’s increases to national insurance and the minimum wage for raising the cost of employing workers.
Burns, who leads the UK’s largest tenpin bowling operator, told City AM that Labour policy has made it “significantly more expensive to employ somebody than it ever was before.”
He said: “The increases in national insurance contributions are incredibly painful for employers, [as is] the constant increase in national living wage.”
Burns added that removing age gaps in the national living wage discourages businesses from taking on younger workers, since experienced staff can be hired for the same cost.
He said: “Removing the age gaps just stops you recruiting younger people, because it’s the same amount of money to employ an experienced person – so why wouldn’t you, if you can.”
Burns said he agreed with “quite a lot” of the comments made by Lord Simon Wolfson, the chief executive of Next, earlier this week.
Wolfson told the BBC that government plans to crack down on zero-hour contracts would make it “much harder” for his company to offer more hours to staff.
The Next boss also called on the government to reverse its hikes to national insurance contributions and the minimum wage, which he described as “employment taxes.”
Burns called on Labour to engage more closely with leading businesses to help address growing youth unemployment, which a former health secretary described as an “economic catastrophe” in an upcoming review.
The Hollywood Bowl chief said: “Leisure and retail is very reliant on people and we need to make sure that, as gateway employers, we’re encouraging employment and recruitment.”
Burns criticised Labour’s Business rates reforms, which he said delivered a “very, very painful” £1.5m hit to Hollywood Bowl within a single twelve-month period.
He also identified the two per cent rise in corporation tax and the Extended Producer Responsibility packaging tax as barriers to growth for UK businesses.
Hollywood Bowl’s share price climbed 15 per cent on Wednesday after the company reported growing revenue and increased spend per customer.
Burns noted that his business operates on a “rain is good, sun is bad” basis, meaning the recent bank holiday heatwave was not welcome news for the operator.
He said: “Now we tend to have a bit more rain than we have sun in this country, so we find that weather offers us more opportunity than downside risk, but sustained periods of hot weather aren’t great for us.”
Revenue growth has been driven partly by a rise in spend per customer, which increased eight per cent to £12.77 in the six months to March.
Hollywood Bowl uses a dynamic pricing system that varies within a pound either side of a set rate, helping the company manage capacity across different customer groups.
Burns explained: “Those who are time-rich but money-poor can come at a time that better suits us and pay a significant discount, and then the money-rich time-poor will pay a slight premium to come at a time that suits them.”