The
taxpayer is paying benefits to more than 4.2million households in Britain where
one or more parties are working, according to parliamentary answers to
questions from Bradford West MP George Galloway. "And it's a scandal that
we are effectively subsidising miserly employers to the tune of more than
£5billion a year, companies who are paying the minimum wage insufficient
to bring their employees above the poverty line. We are all paying so that the
workers in these exploitative companies can keep a roof over their heads and
their children a calorie or two above malnutrition," the MP said.
Galloway continued: "We need to scrap the minimum wage and ensure
legally that all employers pay the living wage. That will take away most of the
taxpayers' subsidy to these companies, which is the way it should be. No doubt
we'll hear the employers' representative whinge that they can't afford it.
Poppycock. We abolished slavery a long time ago and the minimum wage is just a
legalised, dressed-up version of it."
The MP added:"Of course these are national figures and we know that
in poor areas, like Bradford, the concentration will be much higher than
one-in-six homes (there are 26 million households in the UK). You have high
unemployment - almost 13% in Bradford West - and if you've got a job the
likelihood is that you'll be claiming one means-tested benefit or another. And
of course it will get worse as the welfare cuts continue to bite. George
Osborne claims the economy is on the mend. Well tell that to the men, women and
children in more than four million homes who can't earn enough in proper jobs
to make ends meet."
