Employment Opportunities Bill
Debate between Tony Lloyd and Nick Smith
Tony Lloyd
That is a genuine issue for debate. It is obvious that it is much easier for someone to live on the minimum wage in, for instance, the north-west of England than in central London. That is why the Mayor of London has begun to advocate strongly—I think I agree with him on this—the introduction of a living wage, which does not simply enable people to operate at or below some notional national level, but recognises such factors as housing costs. However, we must still maintain a national floor through which people cannot fall.
Nick Smith
I congratulate my hon. Friend on what I consider to be a sensible defence of the minimum wage. Does he agree that the Bill’s “bob a job” wages plan would dramatically undermine it, particularly in areas such as mine in south Wales, where it helps to boost local economies?
Tony Lloyd
That is the point that I was making about the word “national”. It ought to be recognised that, in one nation—whether we measure it from the tip of Scotland to the far south or from the west to the east—we are all in this together. We cannot have an economy that is dislocated. Although the last Labour Government got some things right and introduced some valuable measures, they failed to wrestle successfully with the regional impact of economic decisions. The dash for the City over-emphasised the needs of a particular region of the south-east at the expense of the rest of the economy. The level of the pound proved disadvantageous to manufacturing industries: it hurt south Wales, parts of the north of England, and even parts of the traditionally industrial midlands. There are significant reasons for our failure to operate entirely effectively in relation to the national economy, and, as my hon. Friend suggests, we should not lose sight of the important role of the national minimum wage in that context.
Let me say something about the training opt-out. The hon. Member for Christchurch did not mention the fact that when the minimum wage was first introduced in 1999, there was also a six-month training discount called the development rate. In 2005, the Low Pay Commission recommended that it should be discontinued, because it had become totally discredited. Not only was there no evidence that employers claiming the discount were training employees; there was evidence that they were not training. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) pointed out to the hon. Member for Christchurch, the Bill contains no provision guaranteeing the quality of even the quantity of training.
There are important issues that the House should debate in relation to how we train in our society. I have strong views with which even my party’s Front Benchers may not always agree. For instance, I still believe that we should consider imposing a training levy on those who will not train. As things stand, a freeloading bad employer can undercut a good employer by refusing to train, and can then poach the product of the good employer’s training. We ought to think about those issues, but I do not think that we should do so in the way proposed by the hon. Gentleman. I do not believe that the Bill will produce different results from the old development rate. There were good reasons for getting rid of that, and I think that he should think carefully about what he has advocated in his Bill. It simply would not work. It would operate as a perverse incentive for rogue employers, and I do not think that we should give them incentives.
This has been an interesting debate, and I shall now draw my remarks to a conclusion as I know that other Members wish to contribute to it. In a way, I hope the hon. Gentleman does press the Bill to a Division, as it will be interesting to count Members through the Lobbies, although I suspect that there will not be enough of us around today for that to be a defining moment in the political history of our Parliament and the economic history of our society.
I do not think the hon. Gentleman is a mean-spirited human being; I say that genuinely, although I cannot say it of all the people who advocate effective gouging of the minimum wage structures. I think his view of how the modern economy works is profoundly wrong, however. It is important that we debate this matter from time to time because although some Conservative Members do not believe this, it is a tough, tough world out there for those at the bottom. We should not return to a tough world in which young kids are paid less than £1 an hour, and adults are paid between £1 and £2 an hour, because that kind of society is both irresponsible and, at best, amoral. We want a society that has basic social standards for all our citizens, and where we can say to our young people, “Get into the world of work because you will be paid well.” We want a society where the “regular plodders” to whom the hon. Gentleman referred are not forced to work hour after hour to take home an unacceptable level of pay, but can be paid a dignified wage because they contribute in the best way they can. That is the kind of society to which we ought to be aspiring, and it is not so very difficult to achieve, but it would be a lot more difficult if we were to accept the premise of the Bill.