National Minimum Wage Debate

Full Debate: Read Full Debate
Department: Department for Education

National Minimum Wage

Dennis Skinner Excerpts
Wednesday 15th October 2014

(9 years, 7 months ago)

Commons Chamber
Read Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Chuka Umunna Portrait Mr Umunna
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I could not have put it better myself; I completely agree with my hon. Friend. We know we have a productivity issue in this country. If people are earning more—if they get better pay—they are more productive. All the research shows that.

I wanted to add a point in respect of our target. Of course the economy might be subject to economic shocks—we had the crash in 2008-09—and the LPC might therefore take the view that the target cannot be met without risk to the economy, and we will build flexibility into the system to account for that.

Dennis Skinner Portrait Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)
- Hansard - -

Is it not the plan to get rid of evil zero-hours contracts as well, like those in my constituency—at Sports Direct, Mike Ashley? If that happens, it will considerably add to the wages of more than 1 million people in Britain, and that figure is growing as the unemployment statistics supposedly fall. All that put together makes it an even better package.

Chuka Umunna Portrait Mr Umunna
- Hansard - - - Excerpts

I completely agree with my hon. Friend, and the point he makes about zero-hours contracts shows that, in some respects, the big difference between the two sides of the House is that—[Interruption.] The Minister will have his time in a moment. From our point of view, of course people having work is the absolute priority, and having a job is of course better than not having a job, but we have got to be more ambitious than that given the nature of the work that so many people in our economy are doing.