Oral Answers to Questions Debate
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Rachel Reeves
Main Page: Rachel Reeves (Labour - Leeds West and Pudsey)Department Debates - View all Rachel Reeves's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Oral Answers to Questions
Rachel Reeves Excerpts(5 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Greg Clark
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Obviously, it is a great source of confidence to people that they can obtain a job. It is the case that employers across the country value the flexibility that having a flexible workforce gives. In fact, again, the Labour leader of Gateshead Council said that
“many zero-hours contracts employees”
on the council
“don’t want to be full time employees and prefer to consider themselves as self-employed”,
so this is a practice that is pursued right across the country.
Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)
Some 1.6 million workers are paid exactly the national living wage of £7.83 an hour, and a further 3 million people are paid within 50 pence of it. In the spring statement last week, the Chancellor said that the ultimate objective of this Government was
“ending low pay in the UK”—[Official Report, 13 March 2019; Vol. 656, c. 349.]
The usual definition of a national living wage is 66% of median earnings, but the remit of the Low Pay Commission is only to get to 60%. Are the Government now committing to end low pay? If so, when?