Get Real and ease strain on working families

Working families having to rely on foodbanks and benefits to get through the week is a national obscenity that can and should be tackled.

That is why Glasgow MP David Linden’s demand that Philip Hammond use his Budget tomorrow to introduce a Real Living Wage for all workers – currently £ 8.75 an hour – should be given serious consideration.

If the Chancellor is worried legislating for higher pay represents the unacceptable hand of government impinging on his preferred economic model of free-wheeling capitalism, he should think again.

The truth is that, for too long, major corporations have been getting away with wage rates that require government, and in some cases charity, to step in and top- up the earnings of workers who simply couldn’t survive otherwise.

So, by failing to regulate for higher pay, the state inadvertently creates a grotesque system of corporate welfare that represents the type of large-scale state intervention most business leaders would claim to despise. Of course, the argument will be touted that forcing firm stoup wages will trigger unemployment.

But exactly the same fears were raised when Tony Blair’s Labour government introduced a minimum wage for the first time in 1999.

The reality was that it simply didn’t happen.

Instead, millions of workers got more cash in their pockets while unemployment levels were largely unaffected.

It is now broadly viewed as one of the most successful government policies of the modern age – with minimal impact on economic productivity. The time now seems right to revamp that legislation.

To be clear, nobody is suggesting the removal of the few safety nets that still exist within the welfare system to support families.

But employers themselves should be taking more responsibility for making sure their employees are paid enough to live while leaving the Government to take care of the sick, disabled and elderly.

If the Tories want to embrace unbridled free-market capitalism, that’s their choice.

But let’s get the world’s richest companies off social welfare so that our tax money can be better spent on the NHS, schools and roads.

We are constantly told that getting the likes of Amazon and Starbucks to pay their fair share of tax is virtually impossible.

The same fears were raised when Labour introduced minimum wage for first time in 1999

So why not do something much easier and just force them to pay staff enough to live?