Jamie Oliver has launched a withering attack on the government’s tax treatment of British entrepreneurs, warning that ministers are “battering” the very people who power the country’s hospitality sector and risk turning Britain into an economic backwater.
Speaking to Times Radio, the celebrity chef said the cumulative weight of recent fiscal measures was choking the life out of small operators and would, in short order, make the UK “less and less important, less and less relevant” as a destination for ambition and enterprise.
“If you just batter the entrepreneurs, you’re going to get nothing,” Oliver said. “There is a lack of understanding of the chemistry of what a bubbling, buoyant, optimistic, aspirational, cool country called Britain looks like.”
His intervention lands at a particularly raw moment for the hospitality trade, which has spent the past year absorbing a punishing trio of cost increases. Higher employers’ national insurance contributions, coupled with a sharply lowered threshold at which they bite, have hit operators hardest in the wage bill. Add to that successive rises in the national minimum wage and a steeper business rates burden, and the margins of independent cafés, sandwich shops and neighbourhood restaurants have been pared to the bone.
Oliver argued that without meaningful incentives for risk-taking, Britain would forfeit its reputation as a crucible for new brands and ideas. “There needs to be enough fat in the game for people to take risk, and the association with risk and then innovation and creativity and brands … that can be amplified and grown,” he said.
His sharpest criticism, however, was reserved for what he characterised as a tax regime blind to scale. The system, he said, draws no meaningful distinction between multinational chains and the corner shop. “What’s interesting is the tax system and the government see no difference between, say, Domino’s or Starbucks and Linda and Paul down the road that run a small independent sandwich shop.” Smaller operators, he added, are being “chocked out”.
Oliver knows the sharp end of the trade better than most. His Italian-themed restaurant chain collapsed into administration in 2019, and only at the end of last year did he set in motion the revival of the Jamie’s Italian brand through a franchise tie-up with Brava Hospitality Group, the owner of Prezzo.
He is far from a lone voice. Earlier this month John Vincent, co-founder of healthy food chain Leon, accused ministers of “totally killing the restaurant industry”. Vincent, who last year bought Leon back from Asda before shuttering 22 sites as part of a restructuring, has emerged as one of the sector’s most outspoken critics, arguing that the tax burden on restaurants has become unsustainable.
When Leon filed for administration, he told the BBC the maths spoke for themselves: “Today, for every pound we receive from the customer, around 36p goes to the government in tax, and about 2p ends up in the hands of the company. It’s why most players are reporting big losses.”
For an industry that has long served as a first rung on the entrepreneurial ladder, and a generous employer of young, low-skilled and part-time workers, the warning from two of its highest-profile figures could scarcely be sharper. Unless the Treasury finds a way to differentiate between the corporate behemoths and the family-run independents, Oliver’s verdict suggests, Britain’s hospitality landscape will be poorer, blander and a good deal less ambitious for it.
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Jamie Oliver warns ministers are ‘battering’ Britain’s entrepreneurs