National Living Wage

Debate between Nick Boles and Baroness Keeley

Monday 18th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Skills (Nick Boles)]

This has been an excellent debate. My, how we have missed the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh). We are all agreed on that. If she is listening, I hope that she is enjoying the hospital grapes. We look forward to her rejoining us and adding great wisdom to our deliberations. However, she was well represented by the right hon. Member for Enfield North (Joan Ryan), who brought equal passion to her argument for working people in her constituency and across the land, who, as we all agree, deserve a pay rise.

I was struck by the fact that most Opposition Members failed to recognise the significance of the achievement. Call it a national minimum wage or a national living wage—I do not really care—but please recognise that it is a significant increase in the legal minimum hourly rate for workers across the country. I would have hoped that there might be a little more recognition of that, although I acknowledge that the right hon. Member for Enfield North and the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) were gracious enough to call it a step in the right direction. Indeed, the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) did the same from the Front Bench, even if there was a little sting in the tail, as there always is with him.

However, none of the Opposition contributors recognised why the Government are able to do this now, namely because of the steps that we have taken to ensure that the economy is strong. If the economy was weak, unemployment was rising and business failures were increasing, such an intervention would have been profoundly damaging to the British economy and to the interests of the working people whose pay we would like see increase. There would have been millions of job losses and a far greater loss of income than gain. The reason why we have been able to do this now is because of the difficult steps—every one opposed by the Opposition—that we have taken to secure a strong economy and to create the platform from which we were able to make this intervention.

[Barbara Keeley]

As the Minister is talking about the strength of the economy, will he comment on my points about the care sector, which is not strong? It is being hit with a bill of £330 million, but the Chancellor has refused even to bring forward funding from later years, as requested by the LGA, to meet the bill. In the meantime, we have people earning £3.50 or £3.89 an hour. That is the tragedy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Boles]

I do not accept the hon. Lady’s analysis. A total of £3.5 billion of extra revenue is being provided through the social care precept and the Better Care Fund, which is more than adequate to cover the cost of the living wage.

[Barbara Keeley]

Will the Minister give way?

[Nick Boles]

I will not give way again.

We agree that we want everyone to benefit from the pay rise that that national living wage represents. I want to be clear about how we will ensure, as a Government and as Members of Parliament, that that is the case. The first and most important thing is to ensure that all employers fulfil, in full and in every case, their legal obligation to pay the national minimum wage at whatever level it is set for those under 25 and the new national living wage for those over 25.

I can report to the House that we are enforcing the national minimum wage more robustly than any previous Government and will be enforcing it more robustly every year. In 2015-16, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs identified more than £10 million of arrears for more than 58,000 workers across the economy—three times the arrears identified in 2014-15 and for twice as many workers. I am delighted to be able to share with hon. Members that we will increase the HMRC enforcement budget to £20 million in 2016-17, which is up from £13 million in 2015-16 and from only £8 million in the last year of the Labour Government. Spending on enforcement of the national minimum wage and the national living wage next year will be more than double what it was in the last year of the Labour Government.

Higher-level Skills

Debate between Nick Boles and Baroness Keeley

Tuesday 5th January 2016 Ministerial Corrections

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

7. What steps he plans to take to make the efficiencies and savings in adult skills set out in the “Spending Review and Autumn Statement 2015”.

[The Minister for Skills (Nick Boles)]

We are protecting funding for adult education at £1.5 billion per year in cash terms. We are extending advanced learner loans to more adult learners and increasing spending on adult apprenticeships to £1.5 billion by 2019-20. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State says, this means that total funding for adult skills training will be 36% higher in the last year of this Parliament than in the first.

[Official Report, 15 December 2015, Vol. 603, c. 1390.]

Letter of correction from Nick Boles:

An error has been identified in the response I gave to the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) during Questions to the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills.

The correct response should have been:

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Boles and Baroness Keeley

Tuesday 15th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

Of course I would be delighted to meet the hon. Lady and that delegation, but I will be asking them what they thought of her party’s plans for Scotland’s economy, which rested on oil prices at $100 a barrel and would now see an independent Scotland entirely bankrupt and probably scuttling to the International Monetary Fund.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

7. What steps he plans to take to make the efficiencies and savings in adult skills set out in the “Spending Review and Autumn Statement 2015”.

[The Minister for Skills (Nick Boles)]

We are protecting funding for adult education at £1.5 billion per year in cash terms. We are extending advanced learner loans to more adult learners and increasing spending on adult apprenticeships to £1.5 billion by 2019-20. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State says, this means that total funding for adult skills training will be 36% higher in the last year of this Parliament than in the first.[Official Report, 5 January 2016, Vol. 604, c. 2MC.]

[Barbara Keeley]

Salford city college was one of more than 100 further education colleges that wrote to the Prime Minister to protest at repeated year-on-year real-terms funding cuts to adult skills since 2010 amounting to 40%. Despite the promise not to cut adult skills funding for FE colleges, Treasury documents say that there will be £360 million of savings and efficiencies, as my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) mentioned. After years of savage cuts, how can that be achieved?

[Nick Boles]

Like many other colleges, the hon. Lady’s college wrote to the Prime Minister before the spending review in response to the shroud waving by the Opposition, who predicted a 25% to 40% cut in the adult skills budget. If the hon. Lady had taken the trouble to attend my right hon. Friend the Chancellor’s spending review statement, she would have heard that he was protecting it in cash terms while increasing the funding for apprenticeships, which her college and others could bid for. If she spoke to her college, she would discover that, like all other colleges, it is pleasantly surprised by the funding settlement.

Women and Low Pay

Debate between Nick Boles and Baroness Keeley

Wednesday 18th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Skills (Nick Boles)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I congratulate the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) on securing this important debate on an issue that concerns us all. I come from a family where the only thing controversial about gender equality was the suggestion that us men were anything other than inferior, so it has always been a mystery to me why the prejudices and discrimination against women, and indeed any other groups in society, persist, but sadly persist they do.

I suspect that the hon. Lady was not in the hall, but I am sure that she was pleased to hear my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, in one of the most effective and powerful passages in his party conference speech in October, say:

“I’m a dad of two daughters—opportunity won’t mean anything to them if they grow up in a country where they get paid less because of their gender rather than how good they are at their work.

The point is this: you can’t have true opportunity without real equality.”

As well as paying tribute to the Prime Minister’s leadership on this issue, I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), who, throughout her career in Parliament, in government and on repeated occasions as acting leader of the Labour party, has led the way on equality, including on women’s pay. All of us should salute her persistence and leadership on this issue.

The fact is that the pay gap, although smaller than it was, is too big, is unacceptable and must not be allowed to survive into the next generation. We can acknowledge that some progress has been made without in any way undermining the assertion that the gap as it remains is unacceptable. There has been some progress. The pay gap has decreased for full-time earners, but it is still too high at, I think, 6 and a bit per cent for full-time earners, and much less progress is being made for part-time workers and those in low-paid jobs. We can all agree that that position is not one that we should tolerate, so the question is what we can do to ensure not only that progress continues to be made, but that it is made more rapidly and made across the board, for part-time as well as full-time work.

I shall explain what the Government have long believed to be one of the most powerful tools in this respect. The laws were passed, as many hon. Members pointed out, by previous Labour Governments a long time ago, but once the necessary laws are passed, progress is often most rapidly achieved as a result of transparency—as a result of making it absolutely clear to everyone, not just the people who work for an employer but customers, partners or neighbours of the employer, what their record is on paying people equally. That is why we have decided to require employers of more than 250 people to publish information about the pay of men and women in their employ, so that they can demonstrate whether they are properly paying people equally. Driving through that transparency and adding to it, as we do with the enforcement of the national minimum wage, and a certain element of naming and shaming, whether formal or informal, both as MPs in respect of employers in our constituencies and as a Government in respect of larger employers nationally, will have a powerful impact on progress.

The second most powerful way to achieve change is to ensure a change in leadership. The Government’s focus on the representation of women on boards is not so much a result or a reflection of our interest in equality being greater in relation to high earnings than low earnings, although equality should be in place across the spectrum. It is more the fact that we are convinced that the more women there are on boards, the more voices there will be insisting that equality be achieved and not putting up with any persistence of inequality, however well disguised.

That is why we are delighted that we have more than met the original target set by Lord Davies of Abersoch to achieve 25% female representation on the boards of FTSE 100 companies. The figure is now at 26%. We now have more women on FTSE boards than ever before. I believe that there is not a single FTSE 100 company left that has no women on its board, but again, although that is welcome progress, it is not nearly enough, because many of the women who have been brought on to FTSE 100 and 250 boards are in non-executive roles. Our next challenge is to ensure that there is an equal increase in the representation of women in senior executive positions, because it is through the leadership roles in every employer that we will drive the change in employment practices down through all the employers in the country.

After leadership, the third most important step is to make it easier for women to get work, to stay in work and to return to work as soon as they choose to do so—it should always be their choice—after having children. That is why, at a time of very difficult decisions on the public finances, we have nevertheless made it a priority to invest in the provision of 30 hours of free childcare for three and four-year-olds for all families who work, because only when there is that significant number of hours of free childcare will we make it possible for more mothers of young children to go to work as soon as it is right for them to do so.

The final and most important measure is more broadly to increase the rate of pay, particularly in low-paid jobs. We have heard from many hon. Members that women unfortunately occupy more low-paid positions than men do. If we can increase pay in low-paid jobs, we will disproportionately help women. I understand the unwillingness of Opposition Members to acknowledge the substantial and significant step that the Government have taken by introducing the national living wage for people over the age of 25, and I accept that the Opposition want to continue to preserve the concept of a living wage as something distinct from our new national living wage. Leaving aside the nomenclature for a moment, the minimum wage that will be paid to every 25-year-old in the country, including in the great kingdom of Scotland, will go up by an amount far greater than any Opposition party suggested in the general election campaign.

[Barbara Keeley]

Will the Minister give way?

[Nick Boles]

I will not give way right now, but I will do so in a second. We have plenty of time, so the hon. Lady need not worry. The minimum wage will go up by an amount far greater than was recommended by the Low Pay Commission. We have strong evidence not only from internal Government estimates but from the Resolution Foundation that women over the age of 25 will disproportionately benefit from the increase in the minimum wage. For all that Opposition Members want to retain some scepticism about the brand that we are putting on the new, higher minimum wage, I hope that they will welcome that significant step in improving the pay of many women in this country.

[Barbara Keeley]

I do not think that the Minister needs to lecture the Opposition on the national minimum wage. Labour Members brought in the national minimum wage in the teeth of a fight from the Conservative party. I know that he was not in the House at the time, but he must know that. None of us needs to be lectured on that. Will he say whether he will address the issue that several Opposition Members have raised about transitional arrangements for the state pension age inequality for women born in the 1950s?

[Nick Boles]

I say gently to the hon. Lady that I was not lecturing her at all. I was resisting the suggestion that the national living wage—I accept that Opposition Members do not like its brand—is anything other than a dramatically positive step for low-paid workers, especially women, in this country. I did not hear a single member of any Opposition party welcome the increase that will happen in April for every worker over the age of 25 who is in a national minimum wage job. If the Opposition want the Government—for better or for worse, we are likely to be in government for the next four and a half years—to take on board some of their excellent suggestions for further progress, they should give us a little acknowledgement for that real achievement. It absolutely builds on the national minimum wage, which the Labour party introduced, and I am always happy to acknowledge, as I did earlier, the Labour party’s role in the Equal Pay Act 1970, but acknowledgement of each other’s achievements is a two-way street. It would be good for Opposition Members to acknowledge our achievement.

[Nick Boles]

I will answer the other point made by the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) before I give way again. She asked an important question on a subject that was also raised by the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith). As I have said, I come from a family that is entirely dominated by women, and two of my sisters are in the age bracket that the hon. Ladies referred to. I have also had some pretty difficult conversations in my constituency surgery with many women who are affected.

The equal pension age is being introduced at the same time as the new state pension, which, compared with the current two-tier state pension, improves the amount of state pension for many women whose national insurance records are incomplete as a result of career breaks or a great deal of part-time work. I am not implying that it makes up all the loss, but there is a countervailing improvement. I am advised by the Department for Work and Pensions that there will be a review of the state pension age. The Pensions Act 2014 provides for a six-yearly review to take into account up-to-date life expectancy data and the findings of an independently led review. The first review will conclude by May 2017 and will consider, among a number of other factors, the impact of the state pension age change on women. That will be an opportunity to consider the issues that the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South raises.

[Barbara Keeley]

I would like to repeat what the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said in 2011 on Second Reading of the Pensions Bill:

“Let me simply repeat what I said earlier…we have no plans to change equalisation in 2018, or the age of 66 for both men and women in 2020, but we will consider transitional arrangements.”—[Official Report, 20 June 2011; Vol. 530, c. 52.]

There were no transitional arrangements. Women who now do not get their pensions until 66 get nothing—no pensioner benefits or bus passes—and, as I have said, many of them are on jobseeker’s allowance or employment and support allowance. Some are even being forced, at the age of 62, on to the Work programme. That injustice will keep coming back. The Secretary of State in that debate promised transitional arrangements.

[Nick Boles]

I do not want to get into a discussion about what another Minister said in a debate that I was not part of, but the quote that the hon. Lady read out indicated that the Secretary of State would consider transitional arrangements. It did not sound to me like a clear pledge to bring in any particular transitional arrangement. I have described the position and the fact that there will be a further review in 2017, which will allow those issues to be revisited.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Boles and Baroness Keeley

Monday 21st July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

The reason we are in government and the hon. Lady is not is that we are very good at taking ideas that are not yet perfect and making them perfect, which is exactly what we have done with the idea of a “tech bac”. I am very hopeful that about 25% of young people will take up the opportunity of a “tech bac”. The key thing is what is in it—that the qualifications that make it up are themselves demanding. That is what we are ensuring.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

15. What steps she is taking to improve the quality of child care.