{#5 Issue: Milburn is a traitor to the labour cause and we know best} Labour has defended its minimum wage policy against criticism from one of the party’s former ministers. Alan Milburn, who served in Tony Blair’s Cabinet until 2003 and now chairs the Government’s Social Mobility Commission, said Labour’s bid to increase the national minimum wage to £8 an hour by 2020 would fail to increase it beyond historic trends. A report from the Commission said the policy was not “at all ambitious as it implies a slower rate of increase between 2014 and 2020 than there was between 1999 and 2014”. The Commission estimated that if it followed the average, the NMW would rise to £8.23 by the end of the decade. However, Ian Murray, a Shadow BIS Minister, said it was “plainly absurd” to suggest that Labour’s policy would not help low-income households. “We are the party that introduced the minimum wage and Labour is the only major party with a plan to strengthen it further,” Mr Murray said in a statement. “Our policy will set an ambitious target for the minimum wage to reach a higher percentage of median earnings than it has ever reached before.” Elsewhere in its report, the Commission warned that Britain was on the brink of becoming a “permanently divided nation” and attacked the three main Westminster parties for failing to tackle low wages and rising housing costs. Speaking to the BBC this morning, Mr Milburn said politicians had to accept the “uncomfortable truth” that child poverty targets which were set in 2010 would not be met by 2020 and called for future governments to set new goals. The focus of government policy, he said, should be on the quality of jobs available and helping young people onto the housing ladder. “If you look at the jobs market; a lot of jobs being created but too many are dead-end, low-paid, 5m workers now earning less than the minimum wage. “In the housing market, the rate of home ownership amongst young people has halved in just two decades and if we are not careful there is a very real risk that young people, this generation and future generations, will simply not have the opportunities to progress like their parents’ generation did,” Mr Milburn said.
Posted on: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 18:47:59 +0000
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