Starbucks Tax Protest: Stores 'Shut Down'

Campaigners claim to have shut down a number of Starbucks' UK stores during protests over the coffee chain's tax arrangements.

Activisit group UK Uncut had planned more than 40 demonstrations across the country, "transforming" shops into refuges, creches and homeless shelters to highlight the "disproportionate" effect the coalition government's cuts to the public sector are having on women.

Pictures uploaded to its Facebook page showed campaigners holding banners and posters while others staged sit-in protests.

The demonstrations came despite an announcement from Starbucks that it expects to pay around £10m in UK corporation tax for each of the next two years.

It followed a revelation that the US-owned company has paid just £8.6m in 14 years of trading in Britain and nothing in the last three years.

Starbucks' Kris Engskov wrote an open letter to customers on Thursday

Lisa Stewart, a 30-year-old UK Uncut activist, said: "If they (the Government) made tax-dodgers like Starbucks pay, that would bring in £25bn a year. Think of all the spending cuts we could cover with that.

"Today we are standing up for the women's services we refuse to see destroyed."

Ms Stewart said the reaction from customers inside the store in London where she had campaigned had been positive, adding: "There is lots of anger out there and people realise they are being lied to."

In an open letter to customers on Thursday, Kris Engskov, managing director of Starbucks UK, said the company had begun "a process of enhancing trust with customers and the communities that we have been honoured to serve for the past 14 years".

He said the company injects nearly £300m annually into the UK economy, and will train more than 1,000 apprentices over the next two years.

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