Chancellor surprises Vince Cable with call for above-inflation increase to minimum wage
“The Long View” on Radio 4 this week was about in-work poverty, something which is still very prevalent in rural England. With this Wednesday’s announcement of record levels of employment and falling unemployment attention is focusing on the fact that in real terms wages have fallen over the last 5 years. I remember when the minimum wage was introduced in Lincolnshire that 1 in 8 people got a pay rise. On the strength of all this the article profiled below, based around the Chancellor’s interest in raising the minimum wage makes you think. It tells us:
George Osborne has attempted to ambush Labour and his Liberal Democrat Coalition partners by signalling that he wants the national minimum wage to increase to £7 an hour.
In a surprising intervention Mr Osborne claimed that a sharp fall in unemployment towards the seven per cent level was proof that he was “fixing the economy” and that a real increase in the minimum wage from the current rate of £6.31 would not harm job creation.
But Liberal Democrat sources said they had been kept in the dark about Mr Osborne’s announcement. They claimed that the Treasury had consistently blocked attempts by the Business Secretary Vince Cable to support an above-inflation rise in the minimum wage to the Low Pay Commission.