Successful companies contribute to society, so don’t knock them.

Successful companies contribute to society, so don’t knock them.

Britain’s favourite cook and the nation’s most inspirational chef stand side-by-side in a desolate film studio with just a three-foot high Perspex fixture and some green plastic discs as props. Pretty basic stuff. Even the unscripted giggle at the end hasn’t been edited out. Have you seen our Christmas TV advert?

We haven’t fallen on hard times since we reported our half-year profits in September. We simply took the decision – aided by Delia and Heston generously waiving their fees – to keep things low-key and put the cash we’d normally spend on a more glamorous production into giving a big festive boost to our Community Matters support scheme for local good causes.

None of us at Waitrose feel smug or self-satisfied about this. We’re simply demonstrating, as so many in our industry and businesses all over the world do, that being commercially successful and giving something back are entirely compatible.

The examples range from the high profile of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, investing more than $26bn (£16.14bn) since 1994 in the commitment that “every life has equal value”, to the modesty of the thousands of corner shops and newsagents with charity collecting tins visible on the counter. Somewhere in between are the 850 member companies of Business in the Community – many of them retailers – fulfilling their wider responsibilities to society in significant and meaningful ways.

They support good causes through cash donations and by providing volunteers. They recognise the need to contract ethically with all their stakeholders: suppliers, the communities in which they trade and employees.

And they know that through the taxes they pay, directly and indirectly, the Government is able to fund the public services that support their endeavours as well as the most needy in society. A virtuous circle.

I therefore have one wish: the sniping at business must stop. Over the past four years, with every new and damaging revelation in parts of the commercial world, we’ve seen an increasing vilification of organisations that create wealth and the hard-working, well-motivated people who work in them. This is just plain wrong.

None of us claims that all business is perfect or that those who have strayed from the path of decent, honest and responsible behaviour should not be held to account.

But for an economy and a society to flourish it needs its business sector to flourish. The size of our public expenses can only be proportionate to the taxes collected and generated by business. The role of Government is to create the conditions for business to thrive, while business needs to accept its responsibility to the wider society.

And there is no sector better placed to embrace this responsibility than retail. It’s in our DNA to strive for the success that generates the wealth that ultimately benefits society and we are blessed with energetic, enthusiastic and committed employees who are motivated to do the right thing at work and in their communities.

  • Mark Price, is managing director of Waitrose and chairman of Business in the Community