The big retailers will cope fine - but the NICs raid is too much, too soon for small businesses

If one looked solely at this week's trading reports from the world of big retail - the likes of Marks & Spencer, Next and Tesco - you might wonder why Rachel Reeves's increase in employers' national insurance contributions (NICs) has caused such a fuss.

- Nils Pratley

It is obvious from the trio's outlook statements that they will cope with the extra costs.

At Tesco, which faces a £250m extra from NICs and other budget changes, the chief executive, Ken Murphy, did not rule out price rises but said the group would do its "very best" to mitigate them; and, given Tesco's expertise in grinding out efficiency gains, you would bet on it to succeed. Stuart Machin at M&S noted the cost headwinds but said "there is much within our control".

At Next, Simon Wolfson gave thanks for zero inflation in the cost of goods it buys, mainly from Asia, and reckoned the clothing group could offset the wage pressures with price rises of only 1%, or half the Bank of England's target rate of inflation. So it is possible to shrug and say a hard-pressed Labour chancellor had to raise taxes somewhere and going after employer NICs was as good a place to start as any.