Order. Questions to the Prime Minister?

Mr. Gareth Thomas.

Mr. Speaker.

Prime Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others.

And in addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.

Mr. Gareth Thomas.

If you worked hard for a company, Mr. Speaker, and helped it succeed, surely you

should be allowed to benefit a little from the profits that that company makes.

So does the Prime Minister think it is now time for companies like Sports Direct to follow the example

of the best British businesses and benefit from a small percentage of the profits.

We have encouraged companies to have profit-sharing arrangements and we took action in previous

budgets to do that. But what we're doing is going further than that, of course, which is

making sure there is, for the first time in our country, a national living wage which will come

in in April of this year. And that means for the lowest paid people in our country, people on minimum wage, it will

be a seven and a half percent pay rise coming this April under a Conservative government.

We should not.

Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, with mounting global economic uncertainty, it was comforting to see this morning's

figures showing record UK employment.

In this new age of kinder consensual politics, does my right honourable friend agree that

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