Industrial Relations

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 9:29 pm on 18 February 1992.

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Photo of Tony Lloyd Tony Lloyd Shadow Spokesperson (Work and Pensions) 9:29, 18 February 1992

As my hon. Friend says, they do not care. Of course, we know that. But we also know that an election is approaching and that, for purely political purposes, it is necessary for them to place on record how much they care. They thought, as the Secretary of State did, that they saw a winner in Labour's promises of a national minimum wage.

Conservative Members express anxiety about a national minimum wage creating unemployment. It was refreshing to hear the Under-Secretary of State—I must say, in the Secretary of State's absence—own up to something that the Secretary of State has never said. He disowned the Secretary of State's eccentric claims about the number of jobs that would be destroyed. In his new mood and perhaps moving to the left of the Tory party, positioning himself for the Kenneth Clarke takeover in opposition, the Under-Secretary of State is ready to rat on his Secretary of State, and is already scaling down the unemployment consequences of the minimum wage.

Let me tell Conservative Members why the Labour party has absolutely no intention of recoiling from the minimum wage. When rates of pay exist which are so disfiguring to those who have work on them, the only possibility is to introduce a national minimum wage to guarantee that people have some dignity in work.