Balls hits back at The Sun over Zero Hours claims

The Sun(£) have reported this morning that Ed Balls is one of several MPs using casual/zero-hours contracts.

That’s obviously a fairly damning accusation. Zero hours contracts are bad news – both the Labour Party and the wider Labour movement have campaigned against their use (although the party have argued that there are some legitimate uses for them).

Yet Balls has come out fighting. A spokesperson for the Shadow Chancellor said:

“On the advice of IPSA we use their casual contracts solely to allow us to pay the living wage to interns and students on temporary placements. Labour’s policy is to tackle the exploitative use of zero-hours contracts, for example by ensuring that employees who have worked regular hours over a year automatically get a fixed hours contract.”

The main problem with zero hours contracts is that they’re exploitative – that certainly seems to be the accusation the Murdoch paper are throwing at Balls. Yet if the Shadow Chancellor has genuinely been going out of his way to ensure that interns and students are paid the Living Wage, then surely that’s far from exploitative? Whilst many would like to see zero hours contracts outlawed altogether, it seems a stretch to argue that Balls has mistreated anyone.

And of course we can’t imagine why The Sun – only a few days after Ed Miliband distanced himself from a photo op with the paper – would want to embarrass the Labour Party…