Minimum wage should not go any higher, suggests Badenoch
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch questioned whether businesses could afford the current minimum wage and suggested it should not increase further.
In an interview with the BBC, Badenoch said he had increased the minimum wage while in government but “many businesses” had told him they had to lose staff as a result.
He added: “For example, I don’t think we need to raise it any further, we’ve seen too many businesses not being able to pay for it.”
Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced in her budget last month that the minimum wage for workers over 21 will rise by 4.1 per cent to £12.71 per hour from April.
The National Minimum Wage for 18 to 20-year-olds will also rise by 8.5% to £10.85 per hour, and for 16 and 17-year-olds and those on apprenticeships the rate will also rise by 6% to £8 per hour.
Asked if he believed interest rates were now too high, Badenoch said: “I increased the minimum wage when I was business secretary and a lot of businesses told me yes, you have increased it but we can’t afford it and we need to lay off staff.”
Asked if this meant businesses were right and he was wrong, Badenoch said: “We need to listen to what businesses are saying. It’s not government ministers who are creating jobs, it’s business who is creating jobs.”
“We need to make sure we set the minimum wage at a good level, but we also need to make sure that they are sick and tired of so much of their other burdens, business rates, corporation taxes, everything they do – the endless regulations, the employment rights bill.
“Let’s lighten this burden”
Asked whether the minimum wage was currently at the right level, Badenoch said the government had set it at the rate the Low Pay Commission said it would, but businesses needed to be consulted.
“For example, I don’t think we need to raise it further, we’ve seen too many businesses not being able to pay for it.
“You can make the minimum wage £1,000 an hour, if businesses can’t pay that none of us will be able to get a job.”
Asked whether he believed there should therefore be no further increases in the minimum wage, Badenoch said: “Stop government intervention. Government mandating minimum wage increases are not creating jobs. Jobs are disappearing. So that’s not the problem at all.”
In his speech, titled Putting Britain to Work, Badenoch said Labor had got the balance between welfare and business wrong and was pushing things too far to the detriment of workers.
Badenoch spoke of visiting a cafe owner called Ruth who burst into tears about how difficult it was to run her business while staff costs and taxes continued to rise.
The Conservative Party leader said the party would conduct a “full review” of what conditions qualify a person for benefits, saying the system was not currently designed to address “the diagnostic age we live in”.
