Other benefits such as tax credits are taken into consideration in calculating the minimum wage. That is how we arrive at the living wage, so we cannot cut tax credits and, using the previous living wage, say that it is the living wage. It has to be completely recalculated.
Back in 2012, the London School of Economics did a study of the impact of the £26,000 benefit cap and concluded that, after all other bills were paid, households with children in some of the less desirable parts of London would be left to bring them up on 62p a day. I read an article the other day about Ban Ki-moon launching the new millennium development goals. He said that expenditure of $1.25 a day is not enough and that the target should be increased. Sixty-two pence a day is about half that. What we are saying therefore is that families with children in a capital as wealthy as London should have that much income to provide for them and to live on.
This Budget is not fair; it is completely unfair. It is very divisive between those who have and those who have not, in terms of property. As for the increase in the minimum wage, welcome though it is, it is not a living wage, and we must continue to campaign for an improvement in that regard.