Senior London Tory calls for “Minimum Wage holiday”

A senior London Tory has called for a Minimum Wage “holiday” for small businesses. That’s despite the IFS today confirming that British workers are facing the toughest squeeze on their wages in 100 years.

Greater London Assembly Conservative spokesman Tony Arbour told City Hall’s Economy Committee that he wanted to see a six month exemption from the Minimum Wage in order to  encourage small businesses to take on staff, saying:

“A  time of high unemployment is not the right time to be pricing out those at the margins of the labour market. I think it is important to now consider the idea of a minimum wage holiday for micro businesses and start up companies who employ fewer than 10 members of staff. This will encourage these small enterprises to take on new workers.

“The minimum wage can act as an inhibitor for small and micro businesses and prevent them from taking the necessary risks to succeed.”

Nevermind ‘pricing people out of the labour market’ – Arbour fails to realise that by paying people lower than the Minimum Wage, you’d be pricing them out of everything. Then again, Arbour doesn’t live in the reality-based community – he once argued that “relatively few Londonders use London Transport”…