The National Living Wage for those aged 21 and over stands at £11.44 per hour from April 2025. Successive increases have lifted pay for around 3 million workers while business groups have warned of higher labour costs in sectors such as retail, hospitality and social care. Official data shows employment rates remain near record levels but recruitment difficulties persist in lower-paid roles.
The chamber rejected the idea that the minimum wage strangles job creation by 19 votes to 13, a 41 per cent yes share and an 18-point margin — decisive, but well short of a rout. Of the 32 who voted with a profile attached, the "no" camp had the numbers everywhere except among women.
The sharpest fracture here is gender rather than age. Men voted no by 13 to 5 (just 28 per cent yes), effectively delivering the result on their own, while the five women who voted split the other way, 3 yes to 2 no. That is a small sample, but the direction is stark: the scepticism about wage floors and employment came almost entirely from male voters.
Age tells a much flatter story. The middle cohorts, 25-34 and 35-44, were close to evenly split (47 and 50 per cent yes respectively), while the few voters at the extremes — the youngest and the over-65s — leaned no, though on numbers too thin to read much into. There is none of the generational battle-line you'd expect from a debate that touches both entry-level hiring and pensioner living costs.
This is the perennial minimum-wage argument in miniature: business-cost anxiety against a labour market still near record employment, and on this evidence it was men, not the young workers most exposed to entry-level hiring decisions, driving the "no".
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