Tory attitudes to low pay reveal their ‘Noddy economics’

CONGRATULATIONS on your coverage of the very serious problem of rural low pay on your business, editorial and front pages (Yorkshire Post, March 1) showing that 40 per cent of workers in rural Yorkshire now earn less than the “living wage”.

I hope that in May 2015 your readers will recall that Conservative MPs, numerically dominant in rural areas, voted overwhelmingly to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board, supported reduced rights and access to justice for workers treated badly by employers, and most of all, supported massively deflationary government economic policies and huge cuts in local authority funding. These in turn have forced steep reductions in bus services, road surface quality, mobile library services and so on.

The MP for my constituency, Sir Greg Knight, responds to having the highest concentration of low paid workers in Yorkshire by suggesting that the quality of life in rural areas may compensate for low pay.

He should know that rural workers can’t pay bills with quality of life or substitute good environment for food on the family table.

It is obviously welcome news that the Low Pay Commission now advocates a three per cent rise in the national minimum wage, marginally higher than the rate of inflation. You report business concerns about affordability, but we should remember groundless predictions of rising inflation and unemployment from business and Conservative politicians when the UK introduced minimum pay in 1999. And comparisons with the United States may be instructive.

This winter, President Obama has proposed a hike in the federal hourly minimum wage of 40 per cent, although the Republicans will probably block it.

Many local areas and states have voted in referendums to impose increases in minimum wages of up to 60 per cent, with no evidence as yet of any significant impact on either prices or jobs.

An increase in the UK minimum wage of 12 per cent would bring it up to the living wage figure and give some slight credibility to Conservative claims to be the “Workers’ Party”.

Much more needs to be done to reverse the Noddy economics of Republicans in the USA and Conservatives in the UK.

These people and their banking and business friends caused 
the financial crisis in 2007/8 and have intensified its effects through kitchen cupboard economic thinking which totally ignores the ability and duty of governments to “top and tail” trade cycles and regulate economies in the interests 
of the whole population – not 
just the rich.