£10 minimum wage ‘to give jobs to robots’

LABOUR’S plans to raise the minimum wage to £10 an hour could see thousands of workers replaced by robots, a report warns today.

The independent Institute for Fiscal Studies says rapid increases in minimum pay rates could tempt employers in a range of sectors to accelerate plans for automation.

Before last year’s general election Jeremy Corbyn committed Labour to increasing the minimum wage to £10 an hour. Today’s report warns that rapid increases in the wage are already putting jobs at risk – with Labour’s plans likely to worsen the problem.

The minimum wage, which was £6.70 an hour in 2015, is already on course to top £8.50 an hour by 2020. This would see the proportion of adult workers on it treble from 4 per cent to 12 per cent over the same period.

Report author Agnes Norris Keiller said the existing wage mainly covered jobs such as care workers and waiters which are ‘not readily done by machines’. Raising the rate rapidly means it will affect more occupations, including jobs such as retail cashiers and receptionists which may be ‘easier to automate’.

She added: ‘The fact that there seemed to be a negligible employment impact of a minimum at £6.70 per hour, the 2015 rate, does not mean the same will be true of the rate of over £8.50 per hour that is set to apply in 2020.’