‘Of course I am sorry’, former Wilko boss tells MPs

The former chairwoman of Wilko has apologised to the thousands of people who lost their jobs when the retailer went bust.

Speaking to MPs on the Business and Trade Committee, Lisa Wilkinson also said former prime minister Liz Truss’s mini-budget was one of the reasons behind the company’s collapse in August this year.

“I am devastated that we have let each and every one of those people down with the insolvency of Wilko,” she said.

“I don’t know how to put into words how sad I am that we have let down all our team members, all our customers, our suppliers, and our advisers.”

Pushed by committee chairman Liam Byrne to apologise directly, Ms Wilkinson said: “You can have the word sorry, of course I am sorry… I am sorry that we are not there supporting these people anymore.”

More than 12,000 people lost their jobs when the 93-year-old chain went into administration.

Ms Wilkinson appeared visibly upset when she explained to MPs the reason why she had not previously sent out an apology to staff.

“Before Wilko went into administration, or it might have been shortly after … I asked to do an announcement to all team members to thank them, but the advice from the directors and the administrators was that I should not do that.

“Subsequently, I have responded to anybody who messaged me, and I am not difficult to get hold of.”

Ms Wilkinson said there were a number of reasons for Wilko’s failure, one of which was soaring interest rates after the mini-budget in autumn last year.

“We were about to enter into secured lending arrangements with Macquarie when the 2022 mini-budget happened,” she said.

“Literally we were in the midst of that, and at that point the interest terms on that loan were hiked massively and that became infeasible. So, that was a contributor.”

Former chief executive Mark Jackson also admitted to an “enormous mistake” that was made in 2018, involving purchasing products in US dollars that led to a loss of about £40 million.

Mr Jackson, who joined the company in December 2022, also revealed that Wilko came close to finding a rescue deal, but ultimately failed.

“I came in knowing that the business was in distress and that there was a window of opportunity to turn it around,” he said.

“A number of things went against us. I still think this business should exist and I think somebody should have invested in it.”

It came after the committee heard evidence from the GMB union that Wilko had told it of a “challenging trading position” as early as 2010.

“We’ve got correspondence between ourselves and Wilko where they identify a challenging trading position from about 2010,” said GMB national officer Nadine Houghton.

“They identify that the discount retailers are an issue.”

She said that, rather than leaning into that, the company tried to change its business model.

“What you see is a move away from this idea of Wilko as a discount retailer,” Ms Houghton said.

She added: “The internal messaging to our members… was very much this attempt to move very much to almost a John Lewis-type model.”

Elsewhere during the session, Ms Wilkinson was asked whether she was “burgling a failing business”, over £77 million worth of dividends taken out from the company in the decade prior to its collapse.

Another MP pointed out that the Wilkinson family is among the wealthiest in Britain, yet there is a £50 million deficit in the company’s pension scheme.

Ms Wilkinson denied that she had used dividends to pay herself in a “personal capacity”.

She added: “I don’t recognise that statement that we are one of the wealthiest families in the country, and I don’t have assets to fill a £50 million hole in the pension scheme.”