Lord Philip Harris of Peckham, founder of the Carpetright chain, has criticised wealthy individuals for leaving London and the UK to avoid paying taxes. He called on successful business leaders and entrepreneurs to remain in the country to help "make the UK great again" and urged those who have already left to return.
Call for wealthy to contribute
Speaking on the Lord Speaker's Corner podcast, the peer argued that wealthy bosses should contribute to Britain's economic revival. "The billionaires that have left and they've made their money in the UK, they should stay here," he told Lord Forsyth of Drumlean. "They should pay our taxes."
He added: "You should think of the UK, and you should think 'we've got to make the UK great again,' and that's the only way we do it. If they all leave, we cannot make it great again. We need them, and I'd like to see a lot of them come back."
The comments come amid claims that a growing number of very rich individuals are leaving the UK because of rising taxes under the Labour government.
From one store to a business empire
Lord Harris built a multi-million pound fortune from carpet stores, starting with one shop in East London and a warehouse in Barking. At age 84, he still works in his carpet shops. "I love serving people," he said. "If you said to me, 'what's your favourite job of everything?' it's serving in a shop."
He denied that Britain's high streets are a "lost cause" due to online shopping and called for free parking to be brought back to revive them.
School turnaround and legacy
The peer, who has dyslexia and left school at 15 with one 'O' level in maths after his father died from cancer aged 39, later established the Harris Federation, a consortium of academy schools now including some 59 primary and secondary schools in London and Essex.
He recalled how Margaret Thatcher asked him in the late 1980s to turn around Sylvan School, a struggling comprehensive in Crystal Palace, south London. "The Prime Minister called me in and said, 'Philip, I'd like you to run a school.' And my exact words (were), 'Margaret, I know nothing about schools'," he said. "She said, 'But you know about business.'"
The GCSE pass rate at the school was 9% but within three or four years it hit 52%. It became "the most improved school in the country, and instead of nobody wanting to go to it, we were getting 3-4,000 people applying for 180 places." By 2002, 92% of students were achieving 5 or more A-C grades.
He attributed the turnaround to "Freedom, freedom, freedom to do what they want." He noted that the Harris Westminster Sixth Form College, established through a 2013 agreement with the private Westminster School, now sends more students to Oxford and Cambridge than some elite schools. "Fantastic - can you imagine...we take children from working class families, 40% on free meals...is that success?" he said.
