Lord Richard Walker, the boss of Iceland supermarket, has called on Chancellor John Healey and Prime Minister Andy Burnham to cut taxes for businesses operating across the UK.
Walker, who backed Labour at the last election, argued that Healey must act decisively to ease the financial burden currently weighing on employers throughout the country.
The supermarket chief previously served as cost of living tsar under Sir Keir Starmer’s government before departing following the change of Prime Minister.
Writing in The Sun on Sunday, Walker delivered a blunt message to the government, warning that “warm words towards business won’t be enough” from the current administration.
He urged ministers to “stop focusing on the cost of living and start focusing on the cost of getting Britain back to work,” signalling a sharp shift in priorities he believes is urgently needed.
“Their first priority should be simple: make it cheaper to employ people, invest and grow,” Walker wrote, laying out his core demand for the upcoming October Budget.
He warned that “every rise in employers’ National Insurance, every punishing business rates bill, and every other additional cost imposed by Whitehall changes the calculation about whether to create another job.”
Walker argued that “the October Budget should begin shifting the tax burden away from jobs and productive investment,” adding his voice to a growing chorus of business leaders demanding reform.
His intervention against Burnham’s cost of living agenda represents the latest in a string of public criticisms Walker has directed at government policymaking in recent months.
Before Burnham entered office, Walker had publicly stated that Ed Miliband would be a “disaster” as Chancellor and argued that energy policy had become “far too ideological.”
Walker also took aim in the House of Lords at the “unsustainable” triple lock pension, which uprates the state pension annually by whichever is highest out of inflation, wage growth, or 2.5 per cent.
His demands echo those of the Confederation of British Industry and other business groups pressing Burnham to reverse the national insurance rise introduced by Rachel Reeves in Labour’s first budget.
That 2024 tax hike raised approximately £25bn, but employers have widely blamed the added hiring costs for a dramatic slowdown across the UK jobs market.
The hospitality sector has separately pushed Burnham to cut VAT and reform business rates, arguing such moves are essential to reviving struggling high streets across Britain.
Prominent entrepreneurs including John Caudwell and Lord Stuart Rose have also written to the government demanding it “stop the creep” of small but accumulating tax hikes on businesses and households.
Rose, the former chairman of both Asda and Marks and Spencer, said he had “never been more concerned about the cost of doing business” and that taxes and regulation had become “serious impediments to growth and employment.”