Political Audit: Next

Corporate Communications & Public Stance

No public evidence identified of any official Next plc corporate statement on the Israel-Palestine conflict, the 7 October 2023 attack, or the subsequent Gaza war; Next does not appear on the Yale School of Management list of companies that publicly condemned the Hamas attack ¹, and it is not discussed in Al Jazeera’s survey of corporate responses to the conflict ². By contrast, Next took a concrete, commercially material action on Russia/Ukraine in 2022, closing its Russian and Ukrainian e-commerce operations and halting shipments to Russia following the February 2022 invasion, at an estimated £85 million sales impact ³. Next was tracked on the “#LeaveRussia” monitor as a company that exited the Russian market ⁴, and its Russian operations were subsequently reported as mothballed as it formally withdrew ⁵. This asymmetry between a vocal, commercially concrete exit from Russia ³⁴⁵ and a continued, unremarked online retail presence in Israel (see Operations in Occupied or Contested Territories) is a documented gap in the evidentiary record. No public evidence identified of Next plc statements on Black Lives Matter or COVID-19 that would permit further comparison of its public-stance pattern. Next’s own corporate materials - its Annual Report & Accounts for the year to January 2026 ⁶ and its Community corporate-responsibility page ⁷ - contain no language framing Israel operations as a distinctive geopolitical partnership, nor any explicit mention of Israel as a market, within the portions reviewed.

Operations in Occupied or Contested Territories

Next operates a direct-to-consumer e-commerce site, next.co.il, serving Israel, with estimated annual sales of NIS 60–70 million as of a 2016 report, all online with no physical stores ⁸. The Israeli online operation is reported to have launched circa 2013 and to be run as a direct Next Retail Ltd. channel rather than a third-party franchise ⁹. In 2016, Next’s Israel-facing website carried a generic international franchise-recruitment notice, prompting a Globes report that Next was “mulling” store openings ⁸; Next’s UK press office subsequently clarified that “the company is not planning on opening stores in Israel” and that identical notices appear on all its international pages, a clarification separately reported by The Yeshiva World ¹⁰. No public evidence identified of Next physical stores, dealerships, or franchise operators located in West Bank settlements, East Jerusalem, or the Golan Heights. No public evidence identified of Next-branded delivery or shipping restrictions or extensions specifically applied to West Bank or “Judea and Samaria” addresses.

“Nextcom Group” (Hebrew: נקסטקום) is a distinct, unrelated Israeli company - a Tel Aviv Stock Exchange–listed communications/infrastructure firm majority-owned by Guy Israeli - profiled by Who Profits for Israeli Ministry of Defence military-infrastructure contracts (2004, 2007, 2011, 2017–2018) and a Golan Heights wind-energy joint venture (2018) ¹¹; Who Profits confirms no corporate relationship between this entity and UK retailer Next plc. A direct search of Who Profits’ own company database returns no entries for “Next,” “Next plc,” or “Next Retail” ¹². A direct review of the UN OHCHR settlement-business database update (HRC 31/36, 30 June 2023 PDF) found no reference to “Next,” “Next plc,” or “Wolfson” in the retrievable document content ¹³; the OHCHR’s September 2025 update press release could not be retrieved for verification ¹⁴.

Legal & Regulatory Scrutiny

No public evidence identified of any legal challenge, regulatory action, OECD National Contact Point complaint, or international-body scrutiny naming Next plc in connection with occupied-territory operations.

Civil Society & Boycott Campaign History

Next is named on at least one independent activist boycott-advocacy page, the Masjid Al-Aqsa “BDS List” (2026), which cites as its sole grounds the Wolfson family’s Israel-directed philanthropy through the Wolfson Foundation, itself sourced to the Wolfson Family Charitable Trust’s own website ¹⁵¹⁶. Next is not listed among BDS Movement’s own named priority-target companies, and it does not appear on Ethical Consumer’s “Palestine boycott list,” which names no fashion or clothing retailer in this context ¹⁷. No public evidence identified of Next being named in Who Profits, AFSC, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, Al-Haq, SOMO, or BankTrack company-specific investigations.

Internal Governance, Content & Retail Policies

No public evidence identified of HR actions, disciplinary cases, or legal actions involving Next plc employees regarding Palestine-related speech, symbols, or union activity. No public evidence identified of platform or editorial-policy scrutiny of Next, consistent with Next’s business model as a physical/online retailer rather than a platform or publisher. No public evidence identified of regulatory action or reporting on the labelling, sourcing, or categorisation of Israeli or settlement-origin products at Next; Next’s Modern Slavery Transparency Statement 2025–26 describes supplier sourcing concentrated in China, India, Bangladesh, Turkey, and other Asian and European manufacturing hubs, with no Israel-domiciled supplier or manufacturing site identified in the reviewed materials ¹⁸.

Brand Heritage & State Partnerships

No public evidence identified of Next plc marketing that invokes military heritage, defence-sector ties, or state-security origins; Next’s founding narrative traces to Joseph Hepworth & Son, a tailoring business established in 1864, with no defence lineage ¹⁵. No public evidence identified of Next hosting Israeli government officials, accepting state honours tied to Israel, or sponsoring “Brand Israel”-style state cultural or public-relations campaigns.

Lobbying, Advocacy, Financing & Logistics

No public evidence identified of Next plc corporate lobbying, PAC-style donations, or corporate leadership roles in pro-Israel or anti-BDS advocacy organisations such as CFI, AIPAC, or USISTF. No public evidence identified of any Next plc corporate donation to the IDF, FIDF, JNF/KKL, Regavim, Im Tirtzu, or settlement organisations; all identified Israel-directed philanthropy traces instead to the personal/family Wolfson Foundation and Wolfson Family Charitable Trust, which are administered separately from Next plc as a corporate entity ¹⁶¹⁹. No public evidence identified of Next directing corporate resources, logistics, or in-kind services to Israeli state, military, or state-aligned NGO efforts during the current conflict.

Corporate Structure & Primary Mission

Next plc is an ordinary UK-listed public company (LSE: NXT) operating on a one-share-one-vote basis with no golden share and a free float exceeding 95%, disclosed in its own Annual Report & Accounts ⁶. Its origin is a UK tailoring and retail business, Joseph Hepworth & Son, founded in 1864, with no evidence of a founding mandate tied to state geopolitical goals ¹⁵.

Executive & Leadership Footprint

Simon Wolfson (Baron Wolfson of Aspley Guise) has been CEO of Next since 2002; he has been a Conservative life peer since 2010, a trustee of Policy Exchange since 2 December 2008, and a trustee of the Charles Wolfson Charitable Trust, which funds Policy Exchange and Civitas ²⁰. No public evidence identified of Simon Wolfson personally donating to the IDF, FIDF, JNF, or settlement organisations, or of board membership in CFI, AIPAC, or the New Israel Fund; Powerbase’s dedicated profile of Simon Wolfson contains no Israel-related affiliations at all ²⁰. An earlier, unverified claim conflating him with New Israel Fund board membership was traced to its source and found to actually describe Sir Jeremy Beecham, a Labour peer named in the same 2010 honours list and unrelated to Next - a corrected misattribution rather than a finding against Wolfson or Next ²¹.

Wolfson-family personal and family-office philanthropy in Israel, channelled through the Wolfson Foundation and the Wolfson Family Charitable Trust and administered via a dedicated Wolfson Advisory Committee in Israel, has long supported the Weizmann Institute (including £1.5 million in 2014 for the Israel National Center for Personalised Medicine, and £2.5 million to Weizmann between 2014 and 2018), the Wolfson Medical Center in Tel Aviv, Bar-Ilan University, The Israel Museum, Heichal Shlomo and the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem, and Kiryat Wolfson developments ¹⁶¹⁹. This funding profile is characterised in the source material as scientific, medical, cultural, and academic. No public evidence identified of Wolfson Foundation or Wolfson Family Charitable Trust grants to the IDF, FIDF, JNF, or settlement entities.

Simon Wolfson himself is not documented as a board member of the Anglo-Israel Association (AIA); a £5,000 donation to the AIA in 2007 came instead from the Charles Wolfson Charitable Trust, a related but distinct entity ²². Simon Wolfson’s wife, Eleanor Shawcross, is the daughter of William Shawcross, who served on the AIA board until 2012 before becoming Chair of the UK Charity Commission - a family and marital network connection, not a personal board role for Simon Wolfson ²².

David Wolfson, Baron Wolfson of Tredegar KC, is a different individual from Next’s controlling family: he was born in Liverpool in 1968, his family traces to Tredegar, Wales via Polish-Ukrainian Jewish immigration, and he is a barrister who served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice from 2020 to 2022 and is now Shadow Attorney General ²³. No public evidence identified connecting him to Next plc, Simon Wolfson, or the Next-controlling Wolfson family. He is documented in December 2023 as personally raising several thousand pounds to fund and winterise a pop-up café serving Israeli soldiers near the Gaza border, motivated by his son’s IDF service ²⁴, and separately as speaking in the House of Lords on Israel/Gaza in October 2023 and on ICC arrest-warrant immunity questions in November 2024 ²³; his conduct is not attributable to Next plc absent evidence of a familial or corporate link.

Next’s Chairman, Michael Roney, has served since 2017, and other independent directors have backgrounds in retail, private equity, and finance, including at Bunzl, Goodyear Dunlop, Apax, S.G. Warburg, and Deutsche Bank ²⁵. No public evidence identified of any Next board member holding a role in a geopolitical pressure group, settlement organisation, or defence-industry board.

End Notes