Meeting of the Parliament 05 November 2014
I listened to James Kelly with a growing sense of bemusement, because Labour has no credibility whatsoever on the issue of the living wage. The simple way to ensure that everyone gets the living wage is for the national Government, which has the responsibility for employment policy, to set the minimum wage at the level of the living wage. Labour did not just fail to do that; it set the minimum wage too low in the first place and failed to protect it by increasing it in line with inflation for three out of the last four years in which it was in government in Westminster. If the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation under both Labour and its Conservative allies, it would already be £7.48 per hour rather than £6.31.
By contrast, the Scottish Government—again unlike Labour in office—has an excellent record on the living wage. As the minister said, all staff who are covered by public sector pay policy are paid at least the living wage, as well as having the no compulsory redundancy policy as part of the social wage, which also helps low-paid families with things such as free prescriptions and free tuition at university. The Labour Party has also opposed those kinds of policies from time to time in the Parliament and suggested that they were something for nothing.
On public procurement, it is very clear that the Scottish Government has gone as far as it legally can with its existing powers to deliver fair wages to contractors. That was most recently demonstrated in the award of the ScotRail contract to Abellio. Instead of welcoming that, Labour condemned it.
The Scottish Government has, of course, explored the possibility of making the living wage a legally enforceable aspect of every public contract. It went as far as to write to the European Union Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, Michel Barnier, who replied that, in his view,
“a contractual condition to pay a living wage set at a higher level than the general minimum wage is unlikely to meet the requirement not to go beyond the mandatory protection provided for in the [Posting of Workers] Directive”.
There is also case law from the Court of Justice of the European Union to back up that position.