Oral Answers to Questions

Dan Jarvis Excerpts

Wednesday 29th October 2014 Commons Chamber

The Prime Minister: I will be talking to the emir very shortly, and of course we will discuss all these issues, particularly how we can work together to combat extremism. Qatar has recently introduced a new Act to ensure that charities are not abusing charitable status and giving money to inappropriate organisations, and we will want to ensure that that is working properly. I commend my hon. Friend for his persistence on this issue, because it really does matter that we work with all our allies to ensure that extremist and terrorist groups do not get the support that they seem to be.

[Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)]

Q12. Research published this week shows that there are now more than 5 million workers stuck in low-paid jobs, women’s wages are lower now than they were a year ago and the gender pay gap is widening. We on the Opposition Benches have been clear about how we would strengthen the national minimum wage. What is the Prime Minister going to do to make work pay?

[The Prime Minister]

What we need is more jobs, which we are getting. We need to see the minimum wage increase, which it just has. Then we need to lift people out of tax by raising the tax threshold. We are doing all three of those things. On the minimum wage, we have just seen it go up to £6.50. What we have seen from the Labour party is a plan to put it up to £8 by 2020, but reasonable assumptions about inflation rates show that the minimum wage will have gone beyond that level by 2020. These geniuses on the Opposition Front Bench thought all summer about what would be a really good plan to help people, and they decided to cut the minimum wage. No wonder they are melting down in Scotland, they have a crisis in South Yorkshire, nobody trusts the shadow Chancellor and nobody believes the leader. It is the same old Labour party—a complete and utter shower.