National Minimum Wage (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Monday 1st March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, the Opposition are struggling to find something to say. The Government have accepted all the recommendations of the Low Pay Commission and are putting them into force, at a difficult time for the economy and when MPs’ and senior civil servants’ pay is frozen. To my mind, they are doing quite well. I look forward to the Minister’s reflections on enforcement because that has proved to be a problem, and certainly the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Empey, are well worth addressing.

I am proud that, when the London living wage came in, at the time I was the chair of the finance committee of the Reform Club and we were the first London club to implement the London living wage. That was in 2012 and we have stuck to it ever since, as have many others. The London living wage is now far more of an institution in London. The underpinning of the Low Pay Commission, which I should point out, has a number of TUC representatives who have played a significant part. At the end of last week, I asked the TUC whether it had any observations that it wished me to make in this debate. It had none. The Trades Union Congress has no observations to make, presumably because it is happy that its representatives on the Low Pay Commission have done a good job and that the Government have done a good job in accepting that.

When we come to sectoral collective bargaining, it sounds fine, apart from the fact that over 75% of workers do not have a trade union to do any bargaining for them. Who is going to be the sectoral bit that does the collective bargaining? All I would say here is: get real. I was interested in the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Davies, which will be very welcome in two weeks’ time when the TUC holds its annual pensions conference. I envisage that both he and I will be present and we will contribute to the section about desirable developments in state pension provision. Everything he has said should come up in that discussion because there are things that need to be addressed with reference to the state pension and how auto-enrolment hits the very low paid.

Finally, some of the points that have been made are undoubtedly fair. It is extraordinarily difficult to live on the national minimum wage, but we do now have a national minimum wage. I take no credit for it, but I was present at some of the discussions that the Conservative Party had. We should remember that the Conservative Party originally opposed it, but it is now a strong supporter because it has seen that it works. One of the good things about the Conservative Party, in the words of the late Lord Butler, is that we do not necessarily embrace change speedily, but we watch it, and when it is relevant, we take it on board. The Conservative Party is fully behind the minimum wage and will continue to make it prosper.