Bakeries will also be scaled back in costs purge, sources say

Tesco director Carl Rogberg, who was cleared of fraud and accounting charges, attacked Lewis for paying a £129 million fine to the Serious Fraud Office for a deferred prosecution agreement.

Living up to his ‘Drastic Dave’ moniker from his time at consumer goods giant Unilever, Lewis is under pressure to stave off the rising influence of German discounters Aldi and Lidl. Both had a record-breaking Christmas, with two thirds of all shoppers heading there in December.

Tesco outperformed Sainsbury’s but its performance was flattered by a boost in sales from its wholesale business, Booker. Waitrose was the worst performing supermarket at Christmas, with sales down 1.7 per cent in the 12 weeks to December 30, according to research company Kantar Worldpanel.

Lewis has attempted a fightback against Aldi and Lidl’s rise with the launch of Tesco’s own discount brand Jacks. However, veteran retail analyst Richard Hyman said the deli counters shake-up appeared to be more of a short-term ploy to boost profitability. ‘I think it’s very difficult to see how anyone could regard this as positive unless all you’re looking at is short term profits,’ Hyman said.

‘Getting rid of counter jobs means some serious skills being lost. Once you start stripping out differences consumers will just do their shopping based on price, and Tesco will still not be able to compete on that front with Aldi and Lidl.’ Unions are expected to act with dismay, with many blaming supermarkets for the demise of independent butchers, bakers and delicatessens on high streets.

The large grocers have routinely argued that such skills are retained via their counter services. Morrison’s, in particular, has pushed its ‘ Market Street’ in advertisements.

Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s have all undergone redundancy rounds and major overhauls. Sainsbury’s cut thousands of management roles in stores last year as part of a £200 million cost-cutting push. It followed a further 3,000 job losses in 2017 in stores and head office roles.

Asda revealed plans to slash up to 2,500 workers last October. There were about 1,000 redundancies in 2017. Morrisons had a major shake-up a year ago, changing 1,700 roles.

Tesco’s Lewis is expected to update staff early this week and will be forced to go through redundancy negotiations.

It comes less than a week after the third and final former Tesco executive facing charges of fraud and false accounting was cleared. Rogberg, who was UK finance chief, followed Chris Bush, Tesco’s former UK boss, and John Scouler, former commercial director.

The case was based on overstated profits in 2014, just months after Lewis joined Tesco.

Yesterday, it was revealed that Bush is suing Tesco for unfair dismissal. He was sacked in April 2015 following a 32-year career at Tesco.