Next boss warns of 'dramatic' fall in entry-level jobs

Next is seen as a high street success story and a business that has evolved and adapted while its rivals from years gone by have gone to the wall.

It has hoovered up brands including Joules, Fatface, Cath Kidson, and Made.com that have struggled in recent years, and employs more than 30,000 people across its businesses. Earlier this month, the retailer increased its full-year profit expectations to £1.2bn, with sales up 6.2% in the first quarter.

But Lord Wolfson rejected any suggestion the retailer was choosing shareholders over workers.

"When people talk about a company making a billion pounds, they assume that that's somehow a person with a billion pounds in their pocket and they must be very, very rich. But the nature of public companies is that we are owned by hundreds of thousands of savers whose savings are often very modest," he said.

"The average dividend we'll pay out to an individual saver will be around £300 a year."

Lord Wolfson insisted Next had to make a profit. "If you look at retail over the last 25 years... 70 to 80% of the names that were there then have gone. And what you can't do is say, we just won't run the business for profit because if you don't run the business for profit, you just don't stay in business," he said.

He also repeated his criticisms of the government's Employment Rights Act, warning one aspect of the legislation meant it was "going to get much harder" for Next to offer more hours for its staff.

One of the reforms includes a requirement for employers to offer guaranteed hours to casual workers in a bid to curb the use of zero-hours contracts.

Lord Wolfson said he agreed with eliminating zero-hours contracts in most sectors, but said the new rules were tricky for retail, "because the risk is you then have to contract for those hours forever".

"You can't afford to... have the same number of people in your shop in February as you have in and around Christmas," the Conservative peer said.

"That's going to be bad news for our colleagues who want extra hours, particularly students who, in holiday time, need extra hours, and of course bad news for customers because service won't be as good."

However the Trades Union Congress said the policy was "hugely popular" and the right to a regular-hours contract "is set to be based on a reference period over several months which will even out peaks and troughs", and would not impact holiday jobs.

"This will give insecure workers on variable hours security in their working lives which they are so badly lacking at the moment," a spokesperson added.

But rather than focusing specifically on solving youth unemployment, the long-serving Next boss said the government should focus on reforming planning laws, energy policy and transport networks to boost overall economic growth.

Lord Wolfson called on the government to release more land for building, suggesting the cost of an acre of agricultural land in the south-east of England was about £15,000, but jumped to as high as £1.5m with planning permission.

"All of these things are holding the economy back and if government could just take its foot off the brakes, we could have a much, much faster growing economy," he added.