Rachel Reeves has been warned that Britain’s high streets could be ravaged as flagship stores look to escape her soaring taxes. Shops should not have to pay more under the reforms, according to Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, B&Q owner Kingfisher, Morrisons, Primark and Asda. Affiliate links: If you take out a product This is Money may earn a commission. It is intended to target giant warehouses used by the likes of Amazon but also means bills will increase for 4,000 shops. And British Retail Consortium (BRC) boss Helen Dickinson has warned that ‘worse could be yet to come’ after the professional services firm PwC forecast an acceleration in closures on the High Street. Retailers face a ‘perfect storm’ of higher costs from next month as employer National Insurance contributions and the minimum wage rise, alongside business rates. In the Lords, Baroness Scott said that higher business rates ‘could end up being the straw that breaks the camel’s back’ as stores face a barrage of tax hikes. Industry experts welcomed the vote – but expectations of any meaningful change are low. The Chancellor has promised to reform business rates – a tax that is based on the value of a property – but the changes so far will mean major retailers paying a higher levy on their biggest stores. These deals are chosen by our editorial team, as we think they are worth highlighting. Tom Ironside, director of business and regulation at the BRC, said: ‘The House of Lords has clearly seen the risk of raising business rates on large retail stores, which provide vital services for customers and drive footfall which supports surrounding businesses. The Chancellor has delayed the introduction of a new business rates system until 2026 at the earliest. It is feared there would be a knock-on effect on smaller shops, which benefit from the number of shoppers who visit the big stores. ‘The damage to society locally in losing them will be difficult to restore, and social cohesion will suffer,’ he said. The issue has been highlighted by the Mail, which has launched a Save Our High Streets Campaign. ‘If the Government continues to increase costs on businesses in the same way as they have begun, there will not be any businesses left on our high streets to tax,’ Baroness Scott of Bybrook told Parliament. Experts believe this could force them to move to out-of-town locations. Lord Thurlow also warned that without a ‘golden goose’, many local communities would suffer. ‘If the anchor stores move away, they will not be able to sustain themselves,’ she said. Worrying figures yesterday revealed 249,000 retail jobs have been lost in the past five years. In a House of Lords debate yesterday on the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s business rates reforms that will hammer the biggest stores, peers heard that the demise of town and city centres posed a threat to ‘social cohesion’. The comments came as peers voted by 283 to 177 to back her amendment to exempt ‘anchor’ stores such as Marks & Spencer and John Lewis from higher rates. This does not affect our editorial independence. The Government has promised to ‘level the playing field between the High Street and online giants’ by putting up rates for larger premises.
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Nothing beats the sparkle of a diamond, but engagement rings aside, few of us can afford the genuine article. A one-carat laboratory-grown diamond from De Beers’s Lightbox Jewelry collection (which will initially launch online in the U.S. 800 (around £600). By comparison, a one-carat natural diamond will start from at least £3,000 for a low-grade stone without any settings. The result? A stone that looks like a diamond, with the same physical and chemical characteristics, but which costs considerably less. Soon, however, grand jeweller De Beers will have a solution: a range of reasonably priced ‘almost-diamonds’. It’s a volte-face for centuries-old De Beers, which has always been firmly against anything that hasn’t been dug up from the earth. Diamonds are sold by the carat, with one carat measuring 6.5mm in diameter, roughly the size of a garden pea. Savvy shoppers have been faking their diamonds for years. Grown in a laboratory, a tiny seed of real diamond is blasted with high-pressure, extreme temperatures and carbon atoms to mimic a three-billion-year process in just three weeks. A handful of UK jewellers already sell laboratory-grown diamonds – Nightingale, Brilliant Earth and Kinetique all sell online – but without the same economies of scale as a global power-player like De Beers, the prices are higher at around £1,500-£1,800 per carat.
The truth is, really savvy shoppers have been faking their diamonds for years, opting for high-grade zirconium oxide, commonly known as, whisper it . Combining cz diamonds with lab-grown sapphires and rubies (which are cheaper to make than lab-grown diamonds), a whopping cushion-cut ‘sapphire’ ring, the equivalent of seven carats, can be yours for £99 (reduced from £169: another advantage of going synthetic . As the official jewellery partner of the Bafta Awards, chances are some of the sparklers on the red carpet are one of Carat’s designs. Prices vary depending on the level of workmanship involved. At 44, she had the perfect life. Although Carat taps into the mid-range ‘bridge’ market (‘we’re not cheap, but we’re not expensive,’ says Scott), it does have a boutique in London’s exclusive Burlington Arcade alongside luxury brands such as Manolo Blahnik and Mulberry. For sisters Emma Canning and Dervla Cogan, democratising diamonds was their goal when they founded Brilliant Inc ten years ago. They can mix and match and it looks the part,’ says Dervla. ‘Our customers may go to a lot of black-tie events, but with us they can get themselves some lovely pear drop earrings for £300 instead of £30,000,’ says Scott. ‘It’s the difference between 1,000-thread Egyptian cotton and regular, mass- manufactured cotton,’ says Scott Thompson, founder of Carat London, which specialises in synthetic stones. Their flashy cocktail rings are a popular payday purchase. The firm’s cz diamond earrings range from £59 for a pair of baby hoops, to more than £400 for show- topping chandeliers. ‘We see celebrities, Saudi princesses . Carat gems, for example, are typically rated ‘IF’ (internally flawless) – the highest level of clarity. Their pieces are so realistic, even women who can afford the real thing make a beeline to their Chelsea boutique. ‘A cheap, clunky setting is always a giveaway. Top-quality cz won’t go yellow or lose its sparkle; combine this superior raw material with hand-cutting and expert polishing by master craftsmen and you’ve got something extremely convincing. ‘Like the majority of women, a real diamond is something we might receive as a gift maybe two or three times in a lifetime,’ says Dervla, who believes the quality of their designs elevate their cz stones. While ‘cz’, as it’s known in the business, is often sneered at (you’d be forgiven if cracker prizes spring to mind) the good stuff is on a different level.