Iceland boss Lord Richard Walker has urged Andy Burnham and John Healey to cut taxes for businesses and to move away from a focus on the cost of living.

Walker, who backed Labour at the last election, said Healey should ease costs for employers. The supermarket chief served as the cost of living tsar under Sir Keir Starmer’s government before stepping down with the change of Prime Minister. His intervention carries weight among retailers: Iceland runs hundreds of stores across the UK and employs thousands of people, making hiring costs a direct bottom-line issue for the chain.

Writing on Sunday, he said “warm words towards business won’t be enough” and argued the government should “stop focusing on the cost of living and start focusing on the cost of getting Britain back to work”.

“Their first priority should be simple: make it cheaper to employ people, invest and grow,” he wrote in The Sun on Sunday.

“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.

“The October Budget should begin shifting the tax burden away from jobs and productive investment.”

Tax cut and triple lock pension calls

His intervention on Burnham’s cost of living drive is the latest in a string of criticisms of UK policymaking. Before Burnham came into office, Walker said publicly that Ed Miliband would be a “disaster” as Chancellor, arguing that energy policy had become “far too ideological”.

In the House of Lords, Walker also hit out at the “unsustainable” triple lock pension, which uprates the state pension each year by whichever is highest out of inflation, wage growth, or 2.5 per cent.

He echoed the Confederation of British Industry and other business groups’ demands for Burnham to cut national insurance for employers, which was raised by Rachel Reeves in the first budget of the Labour government. That 2024 tax hike raised about £25bn, yet employers have blamed the added cost of hiring for the dramatic slowdown in the jobs market. The increase, which took effect in April 2025, lifted the main rate of employers’ National Insurance from 13.8 per cent to 15 per cent and lowered the earnings threshold at which the levy applies, raising the cost of every hire for firms across the economy.

The hospitality sector has meanwhile pushed for Burnham to cut VAT and reform business rates in order to boost high streets. Business rates, a property tax on commercial premises, have long been a particular burden for retailers and restaurants, who pay them regardless of profitability.

Top entrepreneurs and business bosses, including John Caudwell and Lord Stuart Rose, wrote to the government calling for it to “stop the creep” of small tax hikes on businesses and households. Rose, the former chairman of Asda and Marks & Spencer, said he had “never been more concerned about the cost of doing business” and added that taxes and regulation had become “serious impediments to growth and employment”.

With the October Budget approaching, Walker’s remarks add to mounting pressure on Burnham and Healey to signal a shift toward lowering employment costs — a test of whether the government can balance its fiscal constraints against business demands for relief.