My Lords, I welcome this statutory instrument and the increases outlined by the Minister. As he knows, next month will be the 20th anniversary of the introduction of the national minimum wage, and I had the honour of being one of the founding members of the Low Pay Commission at the time. The recommendations we made impacted on and benefited 1 million women—and, incidentally, the world did not come to an end, which some forecasts had said would happen.
I am pleased that successive Governments have upheld the principles laid down by the original committee, and I hope that that will continue. Obviously, this was before the national living wage was introduced. However, one omission from our very first report in 1998, before the implementation, was the issue of accommodation offset. We were asked as a committee to look at that again, because we had not seen the significance of it.
I well remember being taken with the committee down to a convent in the middle of the Devon countryside to be gently lobbied by the Mother Superior and a number of nuns about the importance of having an accommodation offset. The Minister will know that it might have been gentle lobbying, but, my goodness, we were in absolutely no doubt whatever about the strength of feeling involved. The experience we had on the committee is a memory I will take with me for a long time. We were conscious that we were creating history, and I am very glad indeed that this is still here for us to admire.