An Open Letter to The Prime Minister and the new UK Government

Hoole Food Market, 23 Faulkner Street, Hoole, Chester CH2 3BD

Dear Prime Minister,

Firstly, I’d like to offer you my congratulations for achieving your appointment to the highest office in the land.

I’m sure you’re well aware of the scale of the challenge which lies ahead of you, your government and the whole of the United Kingdom.

As a forty-one year old co-director of a small limited company, I need you to hear my appeal for the most expedient economic assistance to the small businesses sector and to the poorest people in our society, as well as ecological improvement to environmental policy.

I have experience of running retail and hospitality businesses through economic crises. But this one feels very different. There must be an innovative response to such a serious threat to the fortunes of people and small companies nationwide. A response which is similar in scale to that deployed by Gordon Brown in the financial crash of 2007/8. Although to people and SMEs, rather than energy companies.

Myself and my Wife Leann, also co-director of our business, Hoole Food Market Ltd. pride ourselves on providing leadership in the retail sector. A more responsible brand of leadership than is witnessed all too often in bigger businesses. We practice a responsible form of capitalism which respects and values ecology and prioritises it above our own personal economic gain. A behaviour we’ve coined as “EconomoLogical”.

I’ve become very disheartened with the direction England in particular has taken under the Conservative party. A very distasteful and irresponsible form of capitalism appears to have taken hold. A form of capitalism so extreme that we have witnessed a gap between the richest and poorest in society grow, as well as a willingness to destroy the environment we live in.

The business we run is diverse, in that we seamlessly blend high street retail and website retail as well as wholesale to the foodservice sector. All with free delivery performed by ourselves and our team. Diversity is to my mind a powerful force which creates strength and is unlikely in my opinion to return to the British economy or ecology without government intervention.

We manage to do what we do with a small yet perfectly formed team of six people. Our team work extremely hard to help us to compete with food retailers many hundreds of times larger than ourselves, and as directors we value their work extremely highly. Every year I will diligently assess the amount we can increase their remuneration by, based on my own forecast for the year ahead. But I have never felt less confident in forecasting the next fifteen months. The energy cost for my business has increased by 38.62% and my energy bills at home have risen by 72.52%.

After taking our basic director salaries, Leann and I take very little of what’s leftover for ourselves. We believe that we have a responsibility to reinvest the majority of any profits back into the future of how our business performs ecologically. However, over the next year there isn’t likely to be anything left to reinvest in our team, or for improving the environmental impact our business has, after taking energy costs into account.

I know that as a business we are not alone in reaching this conclusion. A huge privilege I have in the line of my work is informally chatting with business leaders in the Hospitality sector while delivering the stock they need. With the aforementioned diversity our business has we are fortunately placed, as people need to eat. Whether those people eat at home or in a hospitality venue, our business is able to provide the service required. However, most hospitality businesses are less able to diversify. In fact many of the operators I speak to are extremely fearful that their guests will no longer be able to afford to patronise them. Their shrinking sales and rising costs are making their businesses impossible to run. If you take this anecdotal evidence as an informal, micro economic climate version of the CBIs Business Confidence survey, I think you have a challenge in scale much larger than price caps and tax cuts are likely to fix.

Tax always appears to be such a divisive concept between political parties. And yet it’s such a vital part of the wealth redistribution system in this country. I myself am very proud to contribute to the Exchequer, as I feel that most of the services we collectively pay for are very worthwhile. I do regret seeing my hard earned contribution being wasted though. I will never understand the lack of reformist thinking in the Conservative party over the last period of governance. So I would recommend that rather than breaking with “Treasury Orthodoxy”, you and your government reform the areas of the public sector which require efficiency savings. However, please understand that reform is certainly not, and nor should it ever be short hand for privatisation.

I would have been happy as a limited company to have paid 25% corporation tax to contribute to a reformed version of wealth redistribution. All businesses require customers to have a relative amount of disposable or discretionary income in order to operate successfully. Yet having heard the leaks and briefings to the media and having watched your first Prime Minister’s Questions a few moments ago, you appear to be very happy to allow the huge profits amassed by energy producers to stay in the coffers of those companies. The very companies who are making huge profits from the current energy crisis!

Our next goal as a business was to have solar panels fitted to our high street retail premise. A goal which we as a business would have been proud to achieve. We have now had to cancel all investment expenditure due to the extremely uncertain economic outlook. I would recommend investments into helping all businesses become more reliant on renewable energy generated on their own premises. Whether this is in the form of more easily accessible grants, or fully funded, it is the right way forward for both economy and ecology.

I must in good faith write to you to let you know my utter disdain for your fiscal and energy ambitions. You appear to think it’s okay to plunder the ecological, geological and environmental resources of the future of my children and the lives they have ahead of them. This must be reviewed. You need to have far more concern for our environment and manage the country as if you were managing a forest. For long term sustainability and with the most ecologically beneficial processes.

You must act now and you must act quickly.

You must help those businesses who are not able to invest in the future.

You must introduce a reformed wealth redistribution initiative to help the the poorest in society.

Only when you have successfully implemented the above will you be on your way to “levelling up” this country.

I acknowledge this letter is more about a destination than a map of how to get there. But that is now your responsibility.

Yours sincerely

Jason Shaw

Director

Hoole Food Market Ltd. (Chester)