ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: We are going to turn to the world of business now and I’m very glad to say I’m joined by the Chief Executive of Sainsbury’s, Justin King, very good to see you Mr King and I want to talk first of all, obviously, about the Paralympics, the closing ceremony is going to be exciting, spectacular, all the other words, it has really lit up the nation and of course Sainsbury’s has sponsored it all. You must be terribly pleased at the way it’s gone and it is not all altruistic is it, I mean Sainsbury’s has come out of it in a good light as well?

JUSTIN KING: Well we have, yes. It has been a very proud time for our company, supporting what has turned out to be such a fabulous event, but we’ve been involved in Paralympics for around three years in terms of sponsorship and it isn’t just about the ten days of sport, although that has been fantastic, it has been what we’ve been able to do with that sponsorship over the last two or three years or so with our customers and colleagues, engaging with issues of disability, inclusiveness in our own business and in society more widely and we hope that the change that we’ve seen in our own business, the change that’s been brought about by people watching many, many hours of Paralympians doing fantastic things, will be lasting in our society.

DM: But you must have been taken by surprise, thinking back to when you took that decision three years ago to get involved, the Paralympics, always the little brother of the Olympics in terms of audiences and viewing figures – not this time. You must have been amazed by the enthusiasm and those bulk audiences for these events.

JK: I suppose we are versus what we thought it might be three years ago but we have seen incredible enthusiasm from customers and colleagues alike over the last two years or so, so I think what we can actually say is what’s happened in the past two weeks is very much what we expected from what we’d already seen in the run up to the Paralympics but it has been truly magnificent and I do hope it is a point in time that we will look back on as being pivotal in our society changing its attitudes to disability.

DM: You touched on, I asked you how it impacted on your own business because everybody is now thinking and saying we are going to think very, very differently in the future about people who are disabled, how we view someone in a wheelchair, how we view someone with learning disabilities, whatever it is. In your own business I’m sure you feel you can still do better. You have made some great steps, you keep changing the stores, your employment policies can change, are you going to look at it that way?

JK: Oh absolutely and we already have. We do employ many thousands of disabled colleagues, we think we’re one of the best employers of the disabled in the UK.

DM: But you can always get better.

JK: Oh of course we can and one of the very direct consequences of our sponsorship was we discovered quite how many of the people who work for Sainsbury’s care for someone who is disabled, we believe around 20,000 people that work for Sainsbury’s care for somebody who is disabled, often an elderly relative, and we’ve changed our policies for carers, made them a bit like maternity and paternity, if you like, policies, as a direct result of our Paralympic sponsorship.

DM: What about the business side of it, much being talked about an Olympic and Paralympic bounce not really transpiring, what happened with Sainsbury’s, do you know?

JK: Well we know but we never felt it would be a sales event, the Olympics nor the Paralympics, because we felt that people would want to stay at home and watch the sport on television.

DM: They might want to go down the supermarket and get some supplies to watch it.

JK: Well they have but maybe the weather has got much more to do with how we eat during the summer months so we never felt that it would be a big sales event. What we hoped it would be, and I think it has been, is a big mood event. It has changed the mood of the nation. By far the biggest thing we need as a country I think is a shot in the arm of positivism and there is no doubt that the Olympics and Paralympics have done that and I hope that will be another legacy, a slightly more positive mood about ourselves, what we’re capable of as a country, what we’re capable of as individuals and that would be a really great legacy from the Olympics and Paralympics if that’s achieved.

DM: Talking to each other, helping each other. I mean one of the dimensions, we’ve been talking about the competitors but let’s not forget the thousands of volunteers. Everyone’s been loving that and asking, well, how do we keep that spirit going, as I say just communicating with each other and being helpful?

JK: Well I think that’s right, the 70,000 or so volunteers have been, if you like the secret success of the Games. I was talking to one just last week, they were unemployed, they volunteered because they were unemployed and I said to them, I just can’t believe that they’ll stay unemployed after the Olympics.

DM: Would you employ them?

JK: If they applied I’m sure we would because they’ve show that they have got all that it takes to be great employees.

DM: But in terms of customer service, that’s what you talk about all the time, that’s a good way – and I know it already happens in some of the stores but you could do more about it.

JK: Oh we could and we had our own volunteering programme, around 150 of the Games Makers and the Paralympics are Sainsbury’s colleagues because we wanted to give our own colleagues the opportunity to play their part too but yes, I think the volunteers have been the secret success and I think it actually tells us that we’re a lot better as a country at delivering service than perhaps we thought of ourselves.

DM: Yes, indeed, I think that’s a very good point. Let’s turn to politics and business, I’ve just been discussing there with the new Business Minister, Michael Fallon, about how the Department of Business is really going to get behind British business, he wants us to celebrate businessmen presumably like you as we celebrate our Olympians. Do you like the message you’re now hearing from the Business Department and have you been a little disappointed up to this point in terms of what you’ve seen from the coalition?

JK: Well I think we should celebrate success in all of its forms whether it’s sport or business and I do think business has had a pretty hard time of it as late. We are in business a force for good and there are plenty of people in business, however, who are a force for bad and we should be prepared to point that out but we should also point out that many businesses, and we would say Sainsbury’s …

DM: But which are the forces for bad though, the bankers?

JK: Well bankers of course are easy to bash and I am sure there are plenty of bankers that are forces for good as well but they have placed a huge burden on our economy in recent years and it is right therefore that they have been criticised for that but …

DM: Presumably you have good relations with the banks, a company your size?

JK: Well I lead a business that has been going for 150 years, it serves over 20 million customers a week, we have 150,000 working in it, I think that’s a pretty good force for good and there are many businesses like Sainsbury’s that can say the same thing and we shouldn’t allow the fact that there are bad aspects of any part of our society – there are bad sports people as well, we have discussed cheating in the past …

DM: Fair point.

JK: We should focus on success and celebrate it, wherever it lies.

DM: Okay, nitty-gritty, you are a hard-headed businessman, is there one thing – we’ve heard a lot of fine aspirations coming out of the government for so long, I think we are still hearing them at the moment. No one can disagree with wanting growth but practically is there something that you think this government could do which would give a real shot in the arm to businesses like yours and the broader British economy?

JK: Well in general terms, what business needs is consistency over time. The thing that is lacking at the moment is confidence and if businesses lack confidence in the future, they won’t invest for the future and it is in investing that jobs and wealth will be created. I think we have to remind ourselves that we are halfway through the five year term of the current government, to be talking about a new term halfway through is not the way a business would be run. If you were in the job of turning around a business, and our government is in the job of turning round an economy, you get on with it as quickly as possible so to be discussing things perhaps in a slightly different light two and a half years in, clearly isn’t helpful but given the changes that have taken place in the last week, what we have to demand of our politicians is to focus on clear, consistent messages about what they are going to try and do in the long term.

DM: It is interesting, just that parallel you are drawing. If that were happening in a huge business, that change halfway through, you would see that then as a sign of a business in distress?

JK: I’d see that as a sign of a business that didn’t take the decisions that it could have taken early enough. We at Sainsbury’s have got a management team that has largely been in place for eight years, a very consistent leadership team. Now that is something that politics struggles to do, consistency over that kind of time period and therefore it is tougher in politics to do this because …

DM: Do you think Mr Cameron moved too soon?

JK: No, I think there is lots more that could have been done in the first couple of years but …

DM: Such as?

JK: Well I think creating a consistent approach. We are still debating things that we’ve been debating for the past two years. We just heard the Minister talk about red tape and bureaucracy and six and a half thousand regulations, well why have we had to wait two and a half years to get to that?

DM: The very point I put.

JK: I’ve been sat in meetings with Ministers going back well into the last government, the last Labour government, talking about regulation and its removal but actually there are more regulations today than there have been at any point in time in history for business so it’s all very well saying that publicly, we’ve got to see the reality in practice.

DM: We are nearly out of time, briefly would a VAT cut help?

JK: Well VAT would help consumers but I don't think that’s the best way for the government to spend money it hasn’t really got. It should always be focused on job creation so I’d go first to National Insurance, it’s a tax on jobs. Make it cheaper and easier for companies to employ people because work is how people earn money, pay taxes and it’s taxes that pay the bills of the state.

DM: Okay, Mr King, thank you very much indeed, always a pleasure to see you there. Justin King, the Chief Executive of Sainsbury’s.