We’ve applauded our key workers. Now let’s stand up for a real living wage

Chancellor Rishi Sunak last week told Conservative conference that the country faced “hard choices”, and committed the government to “balancing the books”. His words echoed those of George Osborne in 2010, who set the UK on a course of damaging austerity that saw public sector pay freezes, public services slashed and social security cuts – hitting those on lowest incomes hardest, stifling growth and increasing poverty.

When Tories commit to “balancing the books”, we know that they have in their minds, “on the backs of the poor”. Already Sunak is scrimping on lockdown measures, with watered-down support for self-employed workers and furlough payments reduced from 80% to 67%.

With the Budget cancelled, we will have to wait to see the full extent of Sunak’s plans, but a major indication comes later this month. Within a couple of weeks, the Low Pay Commission (LPC) will make its recommendation to government on the national minimum wage increases for April 2021.

At the start of the LPC’s consultation in March, they had said their central projection was that the main rate should rise by 49p to £9.21 per hour from its current £8.72. However, there are now calls to reduce the increase to just 15p – or even to freeze the national minimum wage.

Having applauded the workers who have kept our country going through the crisis, now is the time to give them a real pay rise. As former shadow Chancellor John McDonnell recently said: “The care workers, shop workers, cleaners and delivery drivers are the minimum wage heroes who are seeing us through this Covid crisis. Many are risking their lives and sadly some have lost their lives.”

The LPC chair, Bryan Sanderson – a former oil, finance and private health executive – is concerned that the proposed 49p rise is now unaffordable. But what about what’s affordable for low-paid workers? Surely that should be the priority for any commission genuinely concerned about low pay?

We know that suppressing wages suppresses demand too. Any wage restraint will weaken the economic recovery. It would be an entirely counterproductive move. It would also result in yet another rise in child poverty – as 70% of children in poverty already live with at least one working parent. You can’t tackle child poverty without tackling low pay.

New research by Autonomy and the High Pay Centre last week showed that we could afford much higher wages for all if the wages of those at the top were capped. As ever, it’s greed that is unaffordable, not the low paid workers who generate the wealth.

Over 20,000 people have already signed a petition urging the government to increase the minimum wage to a real living wage of at least £10 per hour for all workers. Low-paid workers and unemployed people face being doubly hit in April as the temporary £20 increase in Universal Credit is due to end, and the minimum wage may not now rise as planned.

The real living wage (set by the Living Wage Foundation) is already £9.30 this year. Labour has said this is the rate at which all care workers should be paid – and surely that should apply to all low-paid workers, including delivery drivers, shop workers and cleaners, too?

The policy agreed at Labour’s last Clause V meeting and written into the 2017 and 2019 Labour manifestos is for a real living wage of at least £10 per hour by 2020. Members can help bolster that cause by joining 20,000 people in signing and sharing the petition started by Claim the Future calling for exactly that policy. And please ask your MP to sign EDM 970 ‘National Minimum Wage’, which calls on the Chancellor to make the minimum wage a real living wage.

As Gordon Brown said recently, “austerity economics doesn’t work”. Labour must not make the mistakes of the 2010-15 parliament. It must challenge austerity. There can be no ducking this immediate fight on low pay: it is the opening battle in what is likely to become a Tory onslaught of austerity on the poorest. Will the lowest paid be protected or will they bear the pain again?

Keir Starmer won the Labour leadership pledging to “work shoulder to shoulder with trade unions to stand up for working people, tackle insecure work and low pay”. Now is the time to stand up.