Oral Answers to Questions

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

I know that small businesses in my hon. Friend’s constituency are flourishing and expanding at an impressive rate. Jobcentre Plus works with a range of providers to make specialist courses available, covering information and communications technology as well as many construction courses. In particular, we are working with businesses to ensure that the local labour market is growing in the right way and that people are getting access to the skills they need.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

T3. With one in four workers in Erdington earning less than the living wage, 82% of children are being brought up in families that are dependent on tax credits. Does the Secretary of State not accept that this is the worst possible time to cut tax credits, and that those families will not be compensated by his phoney living wage? Will he join me in welcoming the initiative taken today by the Labour-led Birmingham City Council to declare that no Brummie in the city should earn less than the real living wage?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Despite all the other arguments, the Labour Government had 13 years in power and they let the national minimum wage fall further behind than ever before. It is this Government who have increased the minimum wage and who are now proposing a real living wage of £9 at the end of this Parliament.