National Minimum Wage

Heather Wheeler Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)]

It was really interesting to hear the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) deliver the last bit of her speech, as it was the most promising and uplifting part of the whole thing. The tone of this Opposition debate has been so downbeat. As usual, it is about doom and gloom. The only way out, say the Opposition, is through regulation and for a would-be Labour Government to layer more and more costs on business. Life is not like that. Labour has not learned its lesson. I find it utterly fascinating that, four years into this parliamentary term, we have this synthetic anger and calls for regulation and layering costs on business, not to do the things that our communities need. We need to lift horizons, especially with regard to education.

One of the things that I am most proud about is the fact that we now have a college in South Derbyshire. We have never ever had one before. It was normal for people to leave school at 14. The boys went down the pits and the girls went into the potteries; that is what they did. Well, it is not like that any more, and it must not be like that. If I can get a college in South Derbyshire, surely to goodness, Labour MPs can think about lifting the horizons for their communities. They should think about how people can get better jobs, because they now have better education. We have 1.3% unemployment in South Derbyshire. When the mines shut, we had 25% unemployment. That is a huge change around in the economy of my constituency.

[Julie Hilling]

I get extremely frustrated with this mantra that people should get better jobs. Actually, the precious jobs in our economy include caring, nursing, sweeping our streets and making sure our communities are safe. The people in those essential jobs are frequently on really low pay. We must drive up the amount of money that employers pay them. We should not just say, “Go and get a better job.” Those jobs are essential to our economy.

[Heather Wheeler]

I completely agree with the hon. Lady. All work should be worth doing and worth paying. There is no difference between us on that. How depressing would it be if ever, God forbid, Labour got into power? That is what its mantra is about. Ours is not about that; ours is about sunny uplands.

[Ms Buck]

Does the hon. Lady not accept the fact that the number and proportion of people in low pay has increased since her party has been in government? It is all very well telling people to lift their horizons, but in fact the crisis of low pay has intensified over the past four and a half years.

[Heather Wheeler]

I will have some difficulty in accepting that. The point is that 1 million fewer people are unemployed. There are more people in employment now than ever before. There are more women employed than ever before. I want people to understand that getting a job and looking after their family is their No.1 priority, and that is happening.

Obviously, I have looked at the statistics for South Derbyshire. Fewer than 7% of workers in South Derbyshire are on the minimum wage. That is because we have made a real effort to get manufacturing in South Derbyshire and to get a supply chain for the manufacturers. We have made a real effort to get apprenticeship training schools in South Derbyshire. We have worked like—let me find a nice phrase for this. We have worked very hard to ensure that people do not just say, “Do you know what, I do that because my dad and my grandfather used to do that.” It is about lifting horizons.

I totally agree that we need all our public services to ensure that we have clean streets, bins that are emptied and street lights that stay on. People should understand the value of working. I find it so depressing that all we ever get from Labour is this business of layering on regulation and doom and gloom. The right ideas that we heard at conference include raising the tax threshold to £12,500. The horizon of my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) is to raise it to more than £14,000. We are not talking about people being grateful that we are only going to tax them at 10%. We want everybody lifted up out of that level. It is outrageous that people should even contemplate that that might be in a Labour manifesto.

[Mr Russell Brown]

I know I am about to make a contribution after the hon. Lady, but let me make this point. There are people who are not working enough hours to come anywhere close to paying income tax. The people who really benefit from what the coalition Government are doing are she and I and everyone else on high salaries. We benefit from increasing the personal allowance. Some people do not even earn half of that personal allowance a month.

[Heather Wheeler]

I completely accept the hon. Gentleman’s point of view and it is completely fair to say that people who were unemployed are now working a few hours, but I remember the great outcry about changing working hours from 16 to 20. There was massive outcry and we were told that it would never happen, but I have not had a single constituent come to me to tell me that they are worse off because they are now working 20 hours or because they are working towards those 20 hours. I think that things have changed.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

In relation to the comment from the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown), which I am sure we can all agree with, does my hon. Friend agree that the best way to try to get people working more hours is to cut the tax on business and get businesses to give the money to the people doing the work, rather than raising more taxes on business?

[Heather Wheeler]

My hon. Friend raises a superb point. Our aspiration to take corporation tax, which is already among the lowest in the G8 and the G20 at 23%, down to 20% is fantastic. The money should stay in the businesses, so that they can afford to pay their employees.

I have two superb employers, among many, in my constituency that make a point of ensuring that I am aware of what is going on. Nobody earns less than £7 an hour at Nestlé and there will be nearly 1,000 workers there. The second company, Faccenda, which is a turkey processing plant, has 400 employees. Nobody there earns less than £7 an hour and most earn far more than that. Companies realise that they do very well if they pay their employees well, but they can only do that if they do not have layers of regulation, layers of red tape and layers of “the Labour party knows best”. That is the old days. That is the ’70s.

[Andy Sawford]

It is sometimes said that my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), is the meanest boss in Britain. As a former employee of the hon. Lady, who was a trustee of the charity that I ran, I can say that she certainly was not one of the meanest bosses in Britain. We would agree that it is important to pay people well and I know that that is something that she stands by, but I am not quite sure about her point about regulation. The proposals are to continue to seek to increase the minimum wage. Surely, she supports the minimum wage, so I cannot quite see why she thinks this will be a burdensome new regulation.

[Heather Wheeler]

The difficulty that the hon. Gentleman slightly skates around is the fact that this would be such a burden for companies that are not doing well. That is where we have the problem. We need our companies not to have regulation, to have aspiration and to have 20% corporation tax, so that they can pay their employees well.

[Ms Buck]

By that same logic, does the hon. Lady think the cost of in-work benefits, which is soaring because of the rise in the payment of low wages and because of falling wages, is a burden on the taxpayer?

[Heather Wheeler]

I want to turn the whole argument the other way around. I feel that companies need to understand that we expect them to look after their employees. We need only to think about what has happened with the taking on of pensions. It has been a huge success. Again, all the naysayers said that nobody would take it up and it would not work, but it has been one of the best successes because good employers have loyal employees who stay and work for them. That is what I want to see in the future for our country. Goodness forbid that Labour get in next May. I do not want that to happen because I feel that the economy is just turning around, as people are understanding that we are manufacturing so much more than we ever used to and that that is the way forward. It is about aspiration, education, apprenticeships, good living and good wages. I see all of that in South Derbyshire and I do not want it to be put under threat.