National Living Wage: Under-25s — House of Commons, 2018-05-03
Topic: Labor
David Melvyn Linden (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. If an employer pays someone under 25 the real living wage, that sends a message of real encouragement to the employee; there is clearly a productivity point here I commend and thank the Young Women’s Trust, which produced an excellent report last year entitled "Paid Less, Worth Less?" I have placed a copy of the report in the Library of the House this afternoon, and its testimonies make pretty stark reading. I will share just one today. It comes from Katie, a 19-year-old from Newcastle: "I was a customer service apprentice in a small shop—only me, another apprentice and my manager worked there I had to do a lot—serve customers on the till, clean the store, display the products, update the online store, pack and post online orders and more I was paid £2.73 per hour, which went up to £3.30. I got paid on a Friday at the end of the month. The next week I was skint I remember one day I had 40p for dinner, so I got one doughnut from M&S My manager noticed and offered to buy me a McDonalds I felt so stupid A quarter of my monthly income was spent on bus fare getting to and from work. It was a struggle." It is sometimes easier for us in this House to focus on statistics rather than people, but Katie’s story succinctly and eloquently outlines the pay inequality that still exists in the UK in 2018 Katie is not the only one. Only last week, following an oral question from me in this House, the Chancellor wrote to inform me that there are approximately 22,000 apprentices in the UK being paid just £3.70 an hour. Surely no self-respecting Minister thinks £3.70 is a decent hourly rate; I do not think any of us would be happy to turn up here and get paid just £3.70 an hour There are also particular sectors in the employment market where deliberate wage depression is a major issue and could have a major impact on the sustainability of business, particularly when free movement of people is restricted post Brexit. These sectors include retail and hospitality, which are often largely staffed by young people I would hope that the Minister would distance himself from the comments made by the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport who back in January 2016 said younger workers would not get a pay rise because they are "not as productive" as older workers. It would take a particularly brave Minister to repeat that, especially on an election day Finally, the Minister might be worried about how businesses would react to under-25s being included in the national living wage. However, let me assure him that there is clear polling evidence from YouGov, on a sample of some 4,000 HR managers; they think that young people should be paid the same as older people for work. Some 79%—that is four in five—of employers think there should be equal pay regardless of age, as do 77% of small and medium-sized organisations. Some 80% of employers also said that young people make a bigger, or the same, contribution as older workers, and that on the whole younger workers came with a fresh perspective and injected some energy Most employers when asked said they would not cut back on hiring young people if the national living wage was extended to under-25s. Indeed, the New Policy Institute found in a report commissioned by Unison on the topic that, historically, raising wages for people under the age of 21 in the UK has not harmed their employment outcomes. So the evidence is clear and so is my message to the Government today.