Conservative Party (UK) others. Until 1999, Conservatives opposed the creation of a national minimum wage, as they believed it would cost jobs, and businesses would be reluctant to start business in the UK from fear of high labour costs. However the party have since pledged support and in the July 2015 budget, Chancellor George Osborne announced a national living wage of £9/hour, to be introduced by 2020, for those aged 25 and over. The National Minimum Wage in 2012 was £6.19 for over-21 year olds, so the proposed rises in National Living Wage by 2020 will represent a significantly higher pay for many.
Minimum wage in Canada Independent Business and the C. D. Howe Institute, contend that minimum wage laws actually hurt the very people they purport to help by forcing employers to raise prices, reduce staff, or close down. Another critic of minimum wage increases, University of Laval economics professor Stephen Gordon, has argued that the poverty-reducing impacts of the minimum wage are overstated. In his National Post article Gordon writes: The case for increasing the minimum wage has problems in both dimensions: the losses in total income are typically underestimated (when they are not being dismissed out of hand) and the putative reductions in income