Asked by: Harry Harpham (Labour - Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough)
Question to the Northern Ireland Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, what steps the Government is taking to tackle low pay in Northern Ireland.
Answered by Theresa Villiers
The Prime Minister announced in March 2015 that the National Minimum Wage will increase by 3% to a new rate of £6.70 per hour, effective from October 2015. This is the largest real-terms increase in the National Minimum Wage since 2006, and over 1.4 million of Britain’s lowest-paid workers are set to benefit.
In the March 2015 Budget, the previous Coalition Government committed to raising the tax free personal allowance to £11,000 by 2017-18. This means that since 2010, 103,000 people in Northern Ireland will have been lifted out of income tax altogether by 2017-18, and 698,000 people will see an average real terms gain of £561.
As the Conservative manifesto at the 2015 General Election made clear, this Government plans to go further. We will raise the personal allowance to £12,500. This means that by the end of this decade one million more people throughout the UK will be lifted out of tax, and anybody who works for 30 hours a week or more on the increased national minimum wage will pay no income tax at all. We will also pass a new law ensuring that the personal allowance rises in line with the national minimum wage.