to remind people that the minimum wage was introduced by the Labour Government - and all the Tories have done is rebrand it as the Living Wage

[cakeorwine]

National Minimum Wage Act 1998 - Wikipedia

The Living Wage - which is the minimum pay someone who is 23 or above can get is going up to £11 an hour.

Jeremy Hunt to confirm national living wage to rise to £11 an hour - BBC News[

""Since we introduced [the national living wage], nearly two million people have been lifted from absolute poverty," Mr Hunt is expected to say.
"That's the Conservative way of improving the lives of working people. Boosting pay, cutting tax."
"

Excuse me - you rebranded the minimum wage, so don't take any credit for introducing it.

I do wish someone would pull the Conservatives up on this when they try to take credit for it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Living_Wage

Introduced in 2016

Thus

The Tories can reasonably claim to have introduced it.

Even if Labour introduced NMW, Starmer doesn’t get the kudos for something Blair brought in?

This post makes no sense. And as PP have said, NMW and LW are two different things

Min wage actually removed rights of workers.... now there is a min wage and companies don't need to pay more,,,

Exactly @onebornsecibd

It's good that the NMW has increased but jobs that used to pay well above NMW haven't increased by anywhere near as much leading to recruitment problems in many areas as technical, skilled admin and even graduate trainee professional roles, most of which require a degree or generally attract graduates, pay hardly anything above NMW.

People don't want to do a job that requires extended training, more than full time hours to get the job done and a demanding workload when they can do a more basic job for the same money, that they can forget about when they're not at work.

They really didn't, you're the one buying into the pretence. They just rebranded the minimum wage to sound like the 'aspirational' wage that would actually pay the bills and were correct that a lot of people would be fooled.

The 'living wage', as in the one that the living wage foundation calculate we actually need to live on, is already £10.90 (more if you're in London) whereas the national 'living wage' is blatantly not. The real living wage is due to increase again very shortly, I'll be pleasantly surprised if the Tories actually match it come April rather than just pretending it's the same thing as they have for the last few years.

It's irritating, they're screwing us over with a rebrand and getting thanks for it. If they rebrand your tap water as 'National Evian' it's not actually going to taste any different!

I have much, much bigger things to worry about.

Well Labour have took credit for the NHS for over 70 years…but we were always going to get a public health system as it was in Winston Churchill’s post war election manifesto.

Peckham Spring

I thought the NMW was a good thing at first but soon realised that employers viewed it as all they needed to pay irrespective of what the job actually was.

😂😂If you squint a bit Rodney could pass for Jeremy Hunt!

If either the Tories or Labour introduced a National Maximum Rent, I'd vote for them.

But I ain't holding my breath 🙄

Labour are talking about making the higher NLW for all over 18

Some sort of rent capping scheme would be good, maybe a huge tax on rent income over a certain amount per property, depending on the area and property size/value but a national or even locality based maximum rent would be genuine chaos. Many landlords would immediately charge the maximum regardless of how much they previously charged and evict/sell from properties that were previously rented at more.

It seems that there are actually 3 different terms. National Minimum Wage, National Living Wage, and Real Living Wage.

This article explains it fairly clearly. https://www.crunch.co.uk/knowledge-running-a-business/living-wage-minimum-wage-whats-difference

And the Conservatives at the time voted against it multiple times when Labour was introducing it.

I'm sure Ed Miliband was ready to introduce a living wage in 2015 and the Tories pinched the idea, like the energy price cap.

🤣🤣 absolutely.

I'm just hoping I can find a nice watch in my garage too.

Oh that'd lovely jubbly, could forget the cost of living crisis completely then 😁

There are lots of things that matter. This isn't one of them.

@cakeorwine They can claim credit the for the new concept of “a wage you can live on” vs a random minimum figure that when it was introduced was not enough to live on.

think it’s a step forward so credit where it’s due. (They are all a set of sh*^ts anyway)

Do you also want to remind them that Laborujj be introduced tax credits and created a culture of handouts and dependency that has permanently damaged the economy. The taxpayer subsidizing low pay and in the process, this country’s productivity tanking over the years.

The elephant in the room is that £11 p/h is still not enough for most people to live on. Single people/childless couples will struggle on that wage, and families will be forced to rely on top ups from UC.

What exactly would they be claiming credit for - they didn't introduce the concept of a wage you can live on, the living wage foundation already had that, and they didn't introduce actually making companies pay it as the 'national living wage' is significantly lower than the actual living wage that had already been calculated.

All they can claim credit for is continuing to have a minimum wage dependent on age and renaming it to fool people into thinking it was the same as the real living wage. Not something I think credit is appropriate for personally.

It might have been a good increase for those kind of unskilled jobs, but for those of us who worked to gain entry to jobs that require education, it’s been a kick in the teeth.

I’m massively struggling to see the point

Is it time for the Daily Party Political Broadcast?