Jeremy Corbyn says Labour would raise minimum wage to ‘£10 an hour by 2020’
JEREMY Corbyn will confront big business today by confirming Labour would hike the minimum wage to a tenner an hour by 2020.
Vowing to end the “blight of low pay”, the Labour leader will say the party is committed to re-balancing the economy so that “no one and no community” is left behind.
George Osborne unveiled plans for a Living Wage of £9 an hour by 2020.
Labour’s ‘Real Living Wage’ tops that aspiration by a pound.
Experts fear that slower wage growth in the economy means the Living Wage will struggle to top £8.75 an hour by the end of the decade.
Labour Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell first unveiled plan for a £10 an hour pay rate in September last year – prompting claims from business groups that jobs would almost certainly go so employers could afford the wage bill.
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Today’s policy push comes after the party was plunged into deeper disarray yesterday over Ken Livingstone.
Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry said Red Ken should have been “thrown out” of the party over his incendiary claims about Adolf Hitler’s links to Zionism.
Mr McDonnell said that Mr Livingstone should have apologised immediately for the offensive remarks when he made them a year ago.
But he repeatedly refused to call for his old ally to be expelled.
A Labour party internal disciplinary panel last week suspended Mr Livingstone for a year. The left-wing veteran promptly said he had only been telling the truth.