High Street retailers have urged John Healey to roll back Rachel Reeves’ employer National Insurance raid to ‘turn the tide’ on unemployment.
The British Retail Consortium (BRC) estimates that the policy has, together with rises in minimum wages, cost the sector £6.5billion and 115,000 jobs.
Reeves’ raid, announced in 2024, saw the annual salary threshold at which NICs must be paid by employers cut from £9,100 to £5,000. The change in April 2025 also saw the NICs rate rise from 13.8 per cent to 15 per cent.
The High Street reeled as employers were liable to pay the tax on many more workers, including young people employed on a part-time basis.
The BRC estimates the threshold change cost £1.74billion.
