Today I am leading a debate in parliament – but it is a debate we should have had three weeks ago.
On 28 November my Make Work Pay Bill was due to be debated in the House of Commons. It was a bill to give greater powers to the Low Pay Commission and strengthen the national minimum wage.
But the debate was sabotaged by the Tory members of parliament Philip Davies and Christopher Chope (you may know them from their previous attempts to undermine the minimum wage). They spoke for over two hours to wreck an earlier debate on tackling revenge evictions. As a result my bill was blocked from making any further progress.
That is why I have called a new debate today to right that wrong and give parliament the opportunity to debate an issue that goes to the heart of the government’s economic failure.
It is a debate that has even greater resonance since the autumn statement. It represented the final nail in the coffin for George Osborne’s failed promise to balance the books and eradicate the deficit by the end of this parliament.
This is in large part because tax receipts have fallen through the floor. The income tax take alone is £70bn lower than forecast in 2010.
We know that around 60 per cent of the drop in tax receipts in the last year is due to stagnating wages. This should not come as a surprise given the reality of the economic recovery that Osborne is presiding over.
Job creation in the lowest-paid sectors has exploded at double the rate of the rest of the economy since 2010. A record five million people across Britain are now stuck on low pay – many of them in part-time and insecure forms of employment.
At the same time we have seen the biggest fall in living standards since the 1870s, with wages having fallen over £1,600 a year on average since 2010.
This is driving up pressure on social security too. It is why the government spends more now on tax credits and social security for families in work than it does the unemployed. It is why an extra £900m has been spent this year alone on tax credits to top up low wages. And it is part of why ministers have had to spend £1.4bn more than planned since 2010 on housing benefit for people who work but cannot afford a roof over their heads.
It all goes to show how misguided David Cameron was when he sneered at the concerns Labour was raising about falling living standards.
‘I see that Labour have stopped talking about the debt crisis and now they talk about the cost of living crisis,’ he said in 2013. ‘As if one wasn’t directly related to the other.’
His dismissive remarks to the Tory party conference show neatly and clearly how he and the chancellor completely missed the point. Dealing with our debts and ensuring people have enough money in their pockets are not different issues – they are all part of the same conversation.
Taking home a fair day’s pay for a hard day’s work is one of the basic fundamentals of a decent society.
That is why the last Labour government’s creation of the national minimum wage was such an important achievement. It restored dignity in work and helped root out extreme examples of poverty pay – like a chip shop worker from Birmingham who in 1997 was being paid just 80p an hour.
A generation on, however, the challenge has changed.
Britain cannot succeed in the modern world with millions of working families working all hours just to keep their heads a fraction above the waterline. We should have higher national ambitions than trying to compete with the sweatshops of the world on poor pay and conditions.
That is why we need to put Labour’s plan to tackle low pay at the front and centre of our campaign for government – working to halve low pay, raising the minimum wage to at least £8 an hour by 2020, and using tax incentives to encourage more firms to pay a living wage.
It is one of the arguments I made in the book I edited this year, Why Vote Labour, an argument for a government that will make people feel more powerful by putting more money in their pockets and balancing our books by leading a charge towards higher living standards.
That is a debate we can win and one we must win for Britain’s future.
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Dan Jarvis is member of parliament for Barnsley Central and editor of Why Vote Labour 2015. He tweets @DanJarvisMP
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