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‘Don’t be fooled’
Theresa May’s new head of policy has drawn up plans to cut workers’ rights, and lower wages for employees in poor areas, despite the Prime Minister’s inaugural pledge to help working people rather than the “privileged few.”
MP George Freeman, appointed head of May’s policy board last week, believes that employees in new firms should not be entitled to employment rights that include paid leave, maternity pay and the minimum wage.
Freeman has also advocated for large companies to pay just 10 percent in corporation tax, as well as proposing that the minimum wage and public sector pay should be “regionalised” to reflect income disparities.
The plans were laid out in a 2013 policy paper authored by Freeman, previously a junior health minister, and Tory MP Kwasi Kwarteng.
In the paper, entitled The Innovative Economy Industrial Policy for the 21st Century, Freeman said, “We should exempt new firms for their first three years from employers’ national insurance, business rates, corporation tax and employment legislation.”
As well as calling for green energy subsidies to be abolished and advocated moving skilled public sector workers into the private sector, Freeman said the national minimum wage harmed the economy.
“By maintaining uniform national minimum wages and wage rates in the public sector, the government creates real imbalances in regional labour markets,” he wrote.
After his promotion last week, Freeman crowed that he will “help shape the new government’s programme” and direct “the deep economic and social reforms we need to make”.
Unite political officer Kate Purcell said Freeman’s appointment exposed the lie behind the Prime Minister’s promise to turn Britain into “a country that works for everyone” by fighting “against the burning injustices” of class, poverty, race and health.
“In Theresa May’s first speech, she made a direct appeal to ordinary working class families and talked about the struggles that people face with job insecurity and low pay,” Purcell said. “Don’t be fooled by her crocodile tears, let’s judge her by her actions.
“She has shifted her Cabinet to the right and appointed a Head of Policy who advocates cuttings wages and rights at work. This is a government firmly on the side of the likes of Philip Green and Mike Ashley, putting privilege and profit before people.”
