National Minimum Wage (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Monday 1st March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I do not welcome these regulations. I accept that they are necessary, but I do not welcome this pathetic rise. I do not see how the Government can feel justified in bringing forward such a pathetic rise when people are struggling through this pandemic. The last 12 months have exemplified the harsh reality for low-paid workers. We all know that the Government’s national living wage is no such thing—it is a complete misnomer. The Government misappropriated that phrase from some people who had done their homework and we are left with a so-called national living wage that is absolutely pathetic. People find it extremely difficult to live on.

I support everything that the noble Baronesses, Lady Chakrabarti, Lady Clark of Kilwinning and Lady Blower, have said. They have laid out clearly that this is simply wrong. The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said that reducing the age limit for the living wage from 25 to 23 shows how arbitrary it is—she called it inexplicable. I hope that the Minister will explain the rationale for that to us, as it seem very strange.

During this pandemic, many of us with higher-paying jobs have been able rapidly to shift to remote working and not face too many struggles. We have been able to wait out the virus at home. But underpaid key workers have had to keep going in and face the pandemic, exposing themselves and their families to the risks of the virus. Then there are those underpaid jobs that have been shut down during the pandemic, such as in hospitality and the arts. These people face huge uncertainty over the future, along with the 20% furlough cut taken out of their already low wages. The Low Pay Commission reported that the lower paid someone was the more likely they were to be furloughed and lose pay as a result. Of people who were furloughed, those who were higher paid were more likely to have their employer top up their furlough to 100% of normal pay. It is just another example of the huge inequalities in the system exposed by this virus. It is no longer the great leveller that our Prime Minister—I say, “our Prime Minister”; I suppose he is our Prime Minister—once described it as.

Overworked and underpaid, every worker should be entitled to take home a real living wage that, no matter what their age, is enough to get by on and leave a little bit over to save for the future. As the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, said, when low-paid people are given more money, they spend it, because they need more food and they need shoes for their children. They spend the money, so it is economically illiterate to underpay people in the way the Government are saying.

The issue of enforcement is interesting as well. This Government are so keen on enforcement for everything. What are they doing about that?

I now have a suggestion, because I do not want just to be negative; I want to give a good idea from the Green Party manifesto. If a Green was put on the Low Pay Commission, it would pay benefits in all sorts of ways. What we should not do is tinker around the edges, which is what is happening at the moment. We need a fundamental shift in the way that our society and our economy approach work. The Government have missed an opportunity to trial a universal basic income scheme in response to the pandemic. It should not matter whether someone is on furlough, unemployed, retired or in work. Everyone should have enough to meet their basic needs in the 21st century. For this reason, I want to ask the Minister to commit to asking the Low Pay Commission to assess the case for a universal basic income. In the same way as it deploys its expertise and resources to assess increases in the minimum wage, it should carefully consider how we could make a universal basic income work to transform our economy into one that is actually fair for everyone.