National Minimum Wage (Offshore Employment) (Amendment) Order 2020

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, it makes a welcome change to speak in your Lordships’ House on a measure of social progress brought forward by the Government. That is rarely the case and I really hope that we will see more of it. It is also welcome to see the co-operation with unions behind this order. It would be lovely to see more of that, particularly with the teaching unions with regard to Covid-19 and the reopening of schools.

I noted that in his comprehensive introduction the noble Viscount referred to semi-skilled and skilled roles being affected by the order. That is quite telling. People who have probably developed their skills through training and experience should see a rise in their wages with the minimum wage. It brings to the fore the way in which in far too many industries the minimum wage has become not a floor but the standard payment for a large number of people.

I also echo the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Hain, about enforcement. We all know that one prosecution per year in no way reflects the level of failure to comply with the existing minimum wage legislation.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, I have to focus on the fact that we have a minimum wage but not a living wage. The situation for people under the age of 25 is particularly difficult. They are not paid enough money to live on, and often they are paid a lot less than others over the age of 25 who work beside them and do the same job. The fact is that younger workers have to live too, and any kind of assumption that they can rely on family support instead of decent pay cannot be considered well founded.

If we are talking about the minimum wage, we need to look at the real living wage, as calculated by the Living Wage Foundation, and at the work of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on minimum income standards. In 2019 the JRF concluded that the wage level for a single person is £36 below what is needed for a basic minimum standard, and for a couple working full-time with two children it is £47 a week below what is needed. In the age of Covid-19, we have to focus more and more on resilience, and that has to mean at a foundational level the resilience of households. Households cannot save or deal with shocks if the minimum wage is not a real living wage.

Finally, we have to look at training more seafarers. A number of noble Lords referred to offshore wind, in particular, and perhaps, in the future, offshore tidal power. We will need to see the necessary training and development of the skills required to work in those areas. We also need to see the necessary skills to carry out research in our oceans, as we very much need to understand the desperate state of our nature crisis and our climate emergency.