Ain't no easy way out - Wetherspoons boss Tim Martin responds

So it’s perhaps understandable that Matt Mohan-Hickson (Portsmouth News, 14 April), cooped up, as he says, like a ‘battery chicken’, is casting around for someone to blame.

Wetherspoon, Virgin and Sports Direct all come in for a bashing from Matt - and no one would say that all behaviour, corporate or otherwise, has been perfect since ‘lockdown’ began.

However, it’s inaccurate to say Wetherspoon ‘would not pay staff until the government retention scheme kicked in at the end of April - while also refusing to pay suppliers’.

In a staff video, recorded hours after pubs were closed, and widely misreported in the national press, I said that ‘all our efforts are going to be on trying to make sure that you get your money and pubs reopen’.

An email, sent out with the video on Monday 23 March, the first day of ‘lockdown’, also said, ‘employees will be paid as normal on Friday 27 March’.

In fact, employees were paid on that Friday and have been paid on every Friday since.

In reality, Wetherspoon has always tried to take its responsibility as an employer seriously.

For over 20 years a sum equivalent to about half our profits has been paid to pub staff as a bonus.

We’ve been named by the Top Employers’ Institute as a top employer for 17 years in a row and, on average, our pub managers have been with the company for 11 years.

Wetherspoon has also operated a free share scheme for more than 30 years - over 10,000 current employees are shareholders in the company.

As regards ‘refusing to pay suppliers’ we have, in fact, paid our smaller suppliers in full, but have asked our larger suppliers to help us through the crisis by delaying part of what we owe until pubs reopen.

Having traded with many of them for forty years, some among them the world’s largest companies, we’re very grateful that almost all have agreed to help us out.

The harsh reality, as readers will know, is that almost any business, big or small, has a serious problem, once the tills stop ringing.

In truth, hardly any businesses, even successful ones, hold large reserves of cash - profits are mostly reinvested and bank debt is used as well, to finance expansion.

The typical business approach of using bank debt has risks, of course, but works well enough in normal times.

However, it has created incredible financial pressure for almost all businesses, including banks, in the unprecedented circumstances of the lockdown.

No doubt the behaviour and communication skills of Wetherspoon, and similar companies, could be improved - but most people are trying to do the right thing.

Unfortunately, as the song goes, ‘there ain’t no easy way out’ of the Covid-19 crisis.

Even the so-called villains are probably just doing their best to survive - and they might not, in fact, be quite as villainous as they are sometimes painted.

Tim Martin, Chairman, JD Wetherspoon Plc