National Minimum Wage

Debate between Anne Main and Chuka Umunna

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Umunna]

I am appalled by that. My hon. Friend is right to mention enforcement. I will come to that, but I pay tribute to his work—I have been to his constituency—on ensuring that those who work hard get a decent day’s pay, in addition to his work on training and apprenticeships, which he has talked about a lot.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

In the interests of fair pay for a fair day’s work, does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that so many right hon. and hon. Members, including many Opposition Members, pay absolutely nothing to some of the young people who work in this place? He should campaign to ensure that all hon. Members pay a fair wage for a fair day’s work.

[Mr Umunna]

I do not know to whom the hon. Lady refers, but in my experience, my Labour colleagues have always sought to ensure that those who work for them are paid a decent wage. I am sure that she, like others, might occasionally, as I do in my constituency office, have sixth-formers who are work experience students. Their situation is different from those whom hon. Members employ, but if hon. Members employ somebody to work for them, they should be paid a decent wage.

I spoke of the evolution of the national minimum wage and what Labour wants to do. With that in mind, we asked the former deputy chair of KPMG, Alan Buckle, to consult business, trade unions and others on how we can strengthen the minimum wage and restore its value. In so doing, Mr Buckle consulted many companies extensively. There is a growing body of opinion that the value of the minimum wage should rise. Sir Ian Cheshire, chief executive of Kingfisher, Jeremy Bennett, chief executive officer for Europe for Nomura, and Steve Marshall, the executive chairman of Balfour Beatty, are among those who are calling, as the economy recovers, for the minimum wage to increase faster than it has in the recent past. They say that that will benefit businesses and improve the public finances—the fall in the real value of the minimum wage since 2010 now costs the Exchequer £270 million a year in additional benefit and tax credit payments, a point that my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), the shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, will build on later.

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[Mr Umunna]

My hon. Friend raises a good point, and I will come to it very shortly.

[Mrs Main]

I can accept that there are some abuses of zero-hours contracts but, as someone who formerly worked as a supply teacher I would caution against getting rid of all zero-hours contracts. Our health and education services rely on people picking up casual contracts—if that is how the hon. Gentleman wants to put it—so that we fill in the gaps when there are shortfalls. It is not always a demon policy to have zero-hours contracts.

[Mr Umunna]

I hear what the hon. Lady says about some zero-hours contracts—if memory serves me correctly, I may have been on one myself when I was a student—but the point is that we are seeing far too many exploitative zero-hours contracts. That is the problem, and we are not going to sit on our hands when we are faced with that situation.

Job Insecurity

Debate between Anne Main and Chuka Umunna

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Umunna]

I am going to make a little more progress and will perhaps give way a bit later.

I was about to go into the shape and the nature of the employment that we see. There are those who are in work but cannot get the additional hours that they want. Over 1.4 million people are working part-time because they cannot find a full-time job; that figure is up by more than a third compared with when this Government came into office. Over 3 million workers—more than 10% of the work force—are underemployed. These are people who are employed but wish to work more hours in their current role or are looking for an additional job or a replacement job that offers more hours. We want to change this.

Above all, as many of my hon. Friends have said, there are those who do not have any security at work but want it so that they can plan and provide stability for their families. Over half a million employees in temporary positions lack any job security because they cannot find permanent roles. Last year, we learned the true extent of the abuse of zero-hours contracts, which my hon. Friends just mentioned, when the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development published its data suggesting that as many as 1 million people are employed on zero-hours contracts. To recap, we are talking about contracts under which the employee is not guaranteed work and is paid only for the work that he or she carries out. In practice, this means that people do not know where the next pay cheque is coming from, are unable to plan ahead, and, in many cases, are constantly living hand to mouth. Of course, insecurity at work increases pressure on the social security budget because it makes it harder for people to borrow to buy a home or to save for their pension. Again, we are determined to change this. We cannot go on like this.

It is important to say—it would be remiss of me not to admit it—that I do not pretend that all this pressure on household incomes and insecurity began under this Government. We do not deny that serious structural issues have grown up over the past three decades under Governments of all different colours, but the question is this: what are this Government doing about it? We are now in the fourth year of this Government: have they made things better or worse?

[Mrs Main]

The hon. Gentleman is making a great speech. I liked the bit where he said that not just any old job will do. Will that be his advice to young people who go to a jobcentre? Will he say, “Don’t get any job—a job where you might learn some skills, find the confidence to get up in the morning, or get a work ethic—but wait for the job of your dreams”? Surely it is better to get people back into work, with the dignity it gives, than just to say, “Wait for that dream job under Labour.”

[Mr Umunna]

The hon. Lady has completely misinterpreted what I said. I was very clear that we want to see more people in work. However, there is nothing wrong with being ambitious and aspirational for the people we represent. There is nothing wrong with wanting people to have more secure work and wanting to ensure that they actually earn a wage they can live off. I make no apologies for that whatsoever.

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[Mr Umunna]

The Secretary of State has argued that he has resisted some of the nastier aspects of his coalition partners’ moves to water down people’s rights at work, but we need only read the reports of what was said on both sides of the House of Lords to see what impact the “shares for rights” scheme was expected to have. That is the point I was making.

[Mrs Main]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is it parliamentary language to describe our coalition partners as “nasty”? There has been no proof of that during the debate.