By Maria Ward-Brennan Britain’s supermarkets face an anxious wait after fashion retailer Next lost a major legal battle today over unequal pay in its UK operations. The Employment Tribunal ruled that the company had failed to show paying its sales consultants, most of whom are women, lower hourly pay rates than staff in its warehouses, which are male dominated, was not sex discrimination. Next had argued that the market wage for a warehouse operative was greater than for a sales consultant and gender did not come into it. But the Tribunal ruled that when there are two labour markets doing equa…