Cambridge Labour kicked off Living Wage Week with Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna outside King’s College.

Students have been heavily involved in getting Colleges to pay the Living Wage. 

Monday saw the beginning of Living Wage Week – a UK-wide celebration of the Living Wage and Living Wage Employers. 

The Living Wage campaign is about employers, employees, campaigners and communities coming together to build a stronger, fairer economy from the bottom up. Employers have found that paying the Living Wage can make good business sense, generating savings by boosting productivity and morale. But under this Tory-led government the number of people paid less than the Living Wage has risen from 3.4 million to 4.9 million over the past four years.

For working people things are getting harder not easier -; yet David Cameron puts a privileged few before hardworking families. The Tory failure on Living Wage is just another reminder that the Tories can’t build a better future for working people because they stand up only for a privileged few. The Lib Dems might like running away from their record as part of the Tory-led Government and trying to pretend that Tory policies are nothing to do with them -; even though they voted for them. But the Tories couldn’t have done it without them.

Labour will put hardworking families first with a plan to tackle low pay and earn our way to higher living standards for all

The Tories are failing on living standards 

Low pay has got worse under the Tories and is fuelling the cost of living crisis. It is also one of the long term drivers of rising social security bills:

• Average real wages have fallen by more than £1,600 in real terms since David Cameron took office in 2010 
   
• In 2013 there were 4.9 million workers in the UK who were paid less than the prevailing living wage rate in their area, two-thirds of which were women. This is an increase of 1.5 million people since 20010. 
   
• People used to be poor because they couldn’t find work -; but half of working age people living below the poverty line are now in working households, and two-thirds of all children living in poverty live in working families. The proportion of UK workers who are low paid is one of the worst in the developed world -; 19th out of a league table of 25 OECD countries. 

• The Government’s own social mobility tsar, Alan Milburn, has pointed to earnings as a key driver of child poverty and shown that weekly earnings are now lower than in 1997. 
   
• The cost to the exchequer of workers paid less than a Living Wage was estimated last year at £3.23 billion in social security spending and lower tax receipts.

The Living Wage is just one part of the Tory failure on cost-of-living. Under the Tories’ failing plan too many people are treading water, working harder and harder just to stay afloat, and worried that the next generation are finding it harder to get on than the last:

• Low pay has got worse under the Tories and is fuelling the cost of living crisis. It is also one of the long term drivers of rising social security bills
   
• Average real wages have fallen by more than £1,600 in real terms since David Cameron took office in 2010 

David Cameron claims this economy is fixed, but their plan has seen a recovery which is benefiting a privileged few far more than most families:

• David Cameron has cut tax for people on over £150,000 a year while raising it for everyone else.
   
• Hedge funds have been given a tax break worth millions.
   
• Families with children have been hit hard, with childcare costs up 30%.