Kemi Badenoch says UK minimum wage is harming businesses

Badenoch is out of contact…

Tory management contender Kemi Badenoch has as soon as once more raised eyebrows with controversial remarks, this time claiming that the ‘minimal wage’ is harming companies.

Badenoch, who hit the headlines just a few days in the past for claiming that ‘maternity pay is extreme’, regardless that the UK has one of many lowest charges of maternity pay within the OECD, has additionally mentioned that the minimal wage can also be ‘overburdening companies’ and inflicting some corporations to shut.

She made the feedback throughout an hour-long query session on the primary stage on the occasion’s convention in Birmingham.

The Monetary Instances reviews Badenoch as saying: “There’s a café in my constituency that closed down, and the woman who owned it mentioned, ‘I can’t afford to pay the wages any extra. I can’t afford minimal wage. I can’t afford for my workers to go on [paid] maternity [leave]’.”

Badenoch continued: “We’re overburdening companies. We’re overburdening them with regulation, with tax. Folks aren’t beginning companies any extra as a result of they’re too scared.”

Many will after all do not forget that the Tories made the identical arguments when the final Labour authorities launched the minimal wage, claiming incorrectly that it could result in fewer jobs. As an alternative the minimal wage proved extremely profitable.

The Decision Basis discovered that ‘the introduction of the minimal wage 25 years in the past is the one most profitable financial coverage in a era, boosting the wages of thousands and thousands of Britain’s lowest earners by as much as £6,000 a 12 months.’

Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Ahead