Owen Smith: I’ll deliver the biggest increase in living standards in a generation

Owen Smith will today pledge to increase the minimum wage to the real living wage if he were elected prime minister as he lays out plans for the “biggest boost to living standards for a generation”.

Smith is expected to commit to raise the lowest hourly pay to £8.25 and would extend this rate to all adults, including those who are under 25. Currently those aged 24 or below are legally paid less than their older colleagues, with a minimum wage lower at £6.70 an hour and those under 20 paid only £5.30 an hour.

Smith is to announce the policy in a speech in Milton Keynes today, along with plans to transform the Low Pay Commission into a Living Wage Delivery Unit tasked with recommending pay increases and ensuring bosses do not cut perks when increasing pay.

The leadership challenger has also promised to found a High Pay Commission which will monitor the ratio between the highest and lowest paid staff and to ensure limits to inequality within private firms that are contracted to provide public services, such as G4S.

The lowest-paid workers have suffered the sharpest fall in living standards ever recorded from a “perfect Tory storm” of falling wages, attacks on workers’ rights and cuts to public services, according to the leadership hopeful.

Smith is expected to condemn slogans in favour of a “clear plan of action which offers solutions”

“For the last six years British workers have experienced a perfect Tory storm of falling wages, the watering down of workers’ rights and cruel cuts to social security – resulting in the sharpest fall in living standards ever recorded for low paid British workers.

“In the face of this onslaught, what’s desperately needed is not more slogans, but a clear plan of action which offers solutions.  

“So as the next Labour Prime Minister, I would introduce radical plans to deliver the biggest increase in living standards in a generation.

“I am committed to delivering a real living wage for everyone over the age of eighteen – ending the discrimination of those under 25. Increasing support for low-paid workers through our social security system – cruelly slashed by the Tories – and delivering a revolution in workers’ rights to give people a strong voice at work.”

The Welsh MP promised 25 “radical” policies for workers, including stronger collective bargaining and a raft of rights for Trade Unions, in his workplace strategy yesterday.

The series of policy announcements follow commitments from rival Jeremy Corbyn to boost workers’ rights over the weekend. He pledged to introduce mandatory collective bargaining for firms with more than 250 staff, repeal new restrictions on trade unions and end zero-hour contracts.