National Minimum Wage

Debate between Rachel Reeves and David Hamilton

Wednesday 15th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. The reality is that under this Government we have seen record numbers of workers on zero-hours contracts, record numbers of people who want to work full time having to work part time, and wages failing to keep up with prices. The average worker is now £1,600 a year worse off and the number of people being paid less than the living wage is up from 3.6 million in 2010 to more than 5 million today. The value of the minimum wage has fallen by 5% over the past three and a half years. For a full-time worker that means a real-terms pay cut of £13 a week.

[Mr David Hamilton (Midlothian) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend as surprised as I am that Government Members are not supporting good employers? There are good employers in my constituency who are arguing very clearly that undercutting the minimum wage is affecting their business. They want good employers, not bad ones.

[Rachel Reeves]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. We saw similar things when Labour introduced the national minimum wage in the first place, because in many cases those who benefitted were the good employers who wanted to pay their workers a decent wage and who were being undercut by the cowboys.