Next boss laments not getting ‘Brexit I wanted’ and calls for migration changes to fill staff shortages
The CEO of Next has implored ministers to ease rules for overseas workers wanting to come to the UK and said he did not get “the Brexit I wanted.”
Lord Simon Wolfson reiterated previous pleas for the government to make it easier for workers to move to the UK to plug staff shortages across the economy.
In an interview with the BBC, the Conservative peer and Brexit-backer said businesses were in desperate need of labour from abroad.
“We have got people queuing up to come to this country to pick crops that are rotting in fields, to work in warehouses that otherwise wouldn’t be operable, and we’re not letting them in,” he said.
“In respect of immigration, it’s definitely not the Brexit that I wanted, or indeed, many of people who voted Brexit wanted,” Wolfson said.
The retail veteran urged ministers to take a “different approach to economically productive migration”.
“Yes, control it, where it’s damaging to society, but let people in who can contribute,” he said.
It is not the first time Wolfson has pleaded with politicians to help ease the pressure on UK PLC to plug vacancies.
Last year, when the country’s businesses were blighted by shortages of truck drivers, Wolfson asked ministers to relax immigration rules to alleviate a crisis in “warehouses, restaurants, hotels, care homes and many seasonal industries.”
“We need a demand led system. The current system clearly isn’t working. And we need a better one,” he said.
During the logistics crisis, which left many supermarket shelves bare, many placed the blame on the UK’s departure from the EU.
However, Wolfson hit back at critics who say the current labour shortage is a case of the chickens coming home to roost.
“I don’t think [the staffing crisis] is what we signed up for. We signed up for having control over our immigration policy. The only decision was that our British government should decide what the immigration policy should be,” he told City PM in September 2021.
More than 80 per cent of pubs and restaurants have been facing difficulties with recruiting enough staff, versus 62 per cent at the start of the year, a survey from the British Chambers of Commerce found earlier this month.
Brexit has “absolutely screwed” the food industry after it “ripped away” its labour source, according to the boss behind the West End’s popular Seven Dials Market.
Businesses at the food and drink destination are facing staff shortages “for every single shift, every single day,” Simon Mitchell, who heads the street food market operator Kerb, exclusively told CityA.M.
The chief executive pointed to an exodus of overseas workers from the country following Brexit and said a domestic labour pool of enthusiastic British workers “does not exist”.