05/09/2014

Green Party Calls For £10 Minimum Wage

The Green Party is calling for a £10 minimum wage for everyone by 2020.

The party believes every worker over the age of 16 should be paid at least the minimum wage and would abolish the age-based differential rates currently in place.

Raising the minimum wage to living wage levels would benefit an estimated 5.2million people, 17% of the working population, according to the Green Party.

The party's leader, Natalie Bennett, said: "Under our plan no-one would be paid less than £10 an hour in 2020. It is a scandal that under the Coalition government the number of workers earning less than the Living Wage has risen by a staggering 50% from 3.4million in 2011 to 5.2million today. It makes a mockery of Prime Minister David Cameron's 2010 statement that a Living Wage is 'an idea whose time has come.'

"The fact that the Green Party are consistently polling at some of our best numbers since 1989 goes to show that our message of the need to reshape our politics and economy to work for the common good is really hitting home."

(CD/JP)

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