National Minimum Wage
Debate between Rachel Reeves and Steve Rotheram(10 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Rachel Reeves
There is an apprentice rate for the minimum wage, which is important, but we need to ensure that more people are doing good-quality apprenticeships so that at the end of them they can get jobs not only at the minimum wage, but above it. My worry is that too many of the current apprenticeships do not offer the decent training that will enable people to get a good-quality job.
Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does she agree that while it was a brave Labour Government who brought in the national minimum wage, they were working in conjunction with the unions, which were pivotal to bringing in the policy? It will be the unions, working together with the Labour Government in 2015, that will introduce a living wage.
Rachel Reeves
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Trade unions, including the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians, of which he is a member, did a huge amount of campaigning for the introduction of the minimum wage and campaign today to ensure that more people are paid a living wage. I will say a little more about what we are willing do in government to ensure that more people are paid a living wage above the national minimum.
Payroll Companies
Debate between Rachel Reeves and Steve Rotheram(11 years, 10 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
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Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on developing some interesting arguments about this largely unknown and certainly unexplored and ignored issue. May I pay tribute to my union, UCATT, which I joined as a young teenager in 1979? Members will say that that year does not sound right, but—
Steve Rotheram
Yes, child labour.
I pay tribute to the work that UCATT has carried out in bringing the issue to the attention of a much wider audience. Can my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) say why, at a time when Liverpool city council, for example, is having 52% of its discretionary budget cut—up to £300 million—the Government are turning a blind eye to payroll companies, which are avoiding paying up to £2 billion into Treasury coffers?