As he prepares to step down, BRC frontman Kevin Hawkins talks candidly to Tim Danaher about fighting retail’s corner and why retailers need to start sticking up for themselves

The voice of retail is, in its own words, a “blasted mid-Pennine drawl”. By last Friday, it had been heard 145 times this year defending the industry on television and radio; last year, the total reached 193.

But it is a blasted mid-Pennine drawl that is about to fall silent. Kevin Hawkins, director-general of the British Retail Consortium (BRC), steps down officially at the end of the year and, while he will remain involved during January until his replacement Stephen Robertson starts, the highest-profile advocate that the industry body has ever had will soon be stepping out of the limelight.

It has been less than four years since he took over from the zero-profile Bill Moyes, yet Hawkins’ period in office has been a tumultuous time for UK retail. Today, as he prepares to step down, he tells Retail Week why big retailers need to do more to stick up for themselves, why the BRC still plays a crucial role and why he felt let down by his members over Farepak.

As business sectors go, retail will never be far from the headlines, but the level of scrutiny it is under has soared since Hawkins took over at the BRC in 2004, when one issue – agriculture – dominated the organisation’s agenda.

How things change. While farming hasn’t gone away, it has been joined by a host of other issues – binge drinking, the environment and obesity to name a few. These have leapt up the political agenda and retailers – particularly the major grocers – are in the firing line.

“The attacks have grown,” says Hawkins. “Every time there is a Competition Commission inquiry, it gives everyone else a platform. The conclusions in the present Competition Commission report say some very sensible things, but will it shut the critics up? Of course it won’t.”

The former Safeway communications chief makes no apology for the fact that so much of the BRC’s lobbying effort goes on issues that relate to food retailing. “There is a supermarket problem, but there isn’t a retail problem. There will always be issues for retail generally, but there is a particular supermarket issue and it’s to do with the size of each of the players, the salience of food, diet, nutrition, drink, food miles – it all comes together with the big supermarkets,” he says.

Two weeks ago could have been described as retail’s black Friday, with two of the big four grocers admitting to fixing the price of milk and damning reports criticising retailers over the cost of store cards and the social impact of promotions on alcohol. Never one to let a perceived slight go unchallenged, Hawkins is clutching draft letters to newspapers as we meet that point out incorrect details of their coverage of the milk scandal.

“I’ve always enjoyed the intellectual challenge of defending the indefensible,” he chuckles. “I’ve been in retail too long to have any illusions about how retailers behave these days, in terms of always being keen to grab any good news that’s going for themselves and leave the bad to somebody else – namely us.”

But, while he accepts that defending retail as an industry is what the BRC is there to do, Hawkins argues that retailers’ arguments would be furthered if they stuck up for themselves more often. When Newsnight ran an item last week on binge drinking, every supermarket referred the programme’s researchers to the BRC.

“I sometimes feel that the odd attempt by the bigger members to defend themselves on these sensitive issues wouldn’t go amiss,” he says. “There are times when you have to and, when I was at Safeway, I’d never have dreamt of asking the BRC to do it.”

The biggest challenge for the BRC is getting its disparate members to agree and, when asked to name a low point in his time there, Hawkins has no hesitation in recalling last year’s demise of Farepak.

“The one time that I felt a little irritated by the industry was when Farepak collapsed,” he says, with uncharacteristic understatement. “Some of our top chairmen and chief executives sat around a table and said, ‘No, we’re not giving anything’, only to find out a few days later that they were coughing up.”

At the heart of the BRC’s existence is the question of whether an organisation representing the UK’s diverse and ultra-competitive retail sector can be effective. The membership extends from Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s to 14 trade organisations representing small stores, and this has led some to question whether such a body can represent the broad-ranging and often conflicting interests of these different groups.

From day one, Hawkins made developing close personal relationships with the biggest members a priority and he claims to have succeeded. “You can’t tell them what to do. You have got to persuade them and show them that, by acting together and standing as a common platform, they will do better than going off as individuals,” he says.

But, despite admitting that the “80:20 rule applies”, he remains adamant that it can represent all its members effectively. “They have a lot in common. There’s a huge commonality of interest and most of it is about things like the cost base, crime, regulation and the minimum wage, which affect all of them to a greater or lesser degree,” explains Hawkins.

“All the big ones are big enough to and do make representations to Government on things that particularly affect them. But there are many issues on which they prefer to use the BRC, because that is much more influential potentially than going in and saying: ‘Tesco wants this, Asda wants that, John Lewis wants the other’,” he says.

Tesco director Lucy Neville-Rolfe firmly believes that, despite the grocer’s might, there is a definite role for the BRC. Describing Hawkins as a “first-class communicator” who has done “a great job balancing the needs of a diverse retail sector,” she says that the need for an industry body is as great as ever.

“The industry faces a number of challenges, including a less certain economic outlook for consumers,” says Neville-Rolfe. “There is a great opportunity to show how we can help lead the debate in areas like environment and health.”

Gaining the ear of Government and fostering an understanding of retail in the corridors of power is always going to be the BRC’s biggest challenge and Hawkins has worked hard to improve the quality of the organisation’s lobbying, both in Westminster and Brussels.

However, the frustration of dealing with Government is the lack of joined-up thinking, when responsibility for the issues that affect retailers is so widely spread. “People ask me what it is like dealing with Government. My answer is: there isn’t a Government. There’s a collection of semi-autonomous departments that don’t seem to talk to each other very much,” he says.

As an example, Hawkins points to the latest hot issue of binge drinking, where four separate Government departments are involved, plus the devolved administrations in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast.

The new, Nationalist-led Scottish administration has presented particular problems for the BRC, as the early signs are that it is keen to make political capital by differentiating Scottish policies from those south of the border at every opportunity.

Labour’s time in power has, in fact, seen the BRC’s role and other similar trade organisations gain greater political significance. The Government has relied on them more and more as what Hawkins describes as “quasi-regulators”, setting codes of practice for their members to follow that save the Government the job of regulating.

According to Hawkins, this is a mixed blessing. “It can be dangerous because, before you know where you are, the web of regulation gets bigger and bigger – almost by stealth,” he says.

He leaves the BRC a much higher-profile organisation than he found it – and one that has a sound financial footing, with nearly a quarter of its revenue coming from its commercial arm, BRC Trading, as opposed to subscriptions. He has no post-retirement plans for a big portfolio of roles – getting his golf handicap down is a bigger priority.

So what advice does he give his successor? Getting up to speed with the food side of the industry and the demands of the media will be crucial areas for Robertson, he says. Managing the expectations of the members when the wheels of Government turn slowly is also essential, he adds.

But the crucial thing, he claims, is the one essential way in which the BRC differs from a retailer. “You stand or fall not only on the successes you achieve, but on the disasters you manage well.” RW

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