Tory tipped as Kemi Badenoch's Shadow Chancellor said minimum wage is a 'burden'

New Conservative person Kemi Badenoch is wide expected to take Shadow Science Minister Andrew Griffith to beryllium her Shadow Chancellor

The Tory tipped to beryllium the adjacent Shadow Chancellor has said the minimum wage is simply a "burden" connected concern and questioned whether it should beryllium scrapped, the Mirror tin reveal.

New Conservative person Kemi Badenoch is wide expected to take Shadow Science Minister Andrew Griffith to beryllium her Shadow Chancellor.

But Mr Griffith took purpose astatine the National Minimum Wage (NMW), saying it "burdens business" and was "simply thing that legislators walk to marque themselves consciousness good."

Mr Griffiths told the assemblage of 'Removing the shackles of the state: How to reconstruct idiosyncratic responsibility', a fringe lawsuit organised by the Taxpayers' Alliance, that determination was a "question astir the state's quality to proceed to enforce outer costs connected business."

At the aforesaid conference, Ms Badenoch provoked wide choler by suggesting maternity wage was "excessive" and had gone "too far."

And she excessively suggested the minimum wage was "overburdening business."

Speaking astatine a Q&A lawsuit astatine the conference, she said: “There’s a café successful my constituency that closed down, and the woman who owned it said, ‘I can’t spend to wage the wages immoderate more. I can’t spend minimum wage. I can’t spend for my unit to spell connected [paid] maternity [leave]’."

Removing the NMW would deed 1.6 cardinal of the lowest paid workers successful the UK - and comes arsenic the Labour authorities announced a hike for lowest earners this week successful the Budget.

Before entering Parliament, Griffith was Sky's Chief Financial Officer, and it's been reported helium made astir £17m from the merchantability of his shares erstwhile Sky was sold to US elephantine Comcast.

Multi-Millionaire Mr Griffith besides loaned his £9.5m London townhouse to Boris Johnson for usage arsenic a HQ for his Tory enactment run successful 2019.

Yet helium told the fringe lawsuit the instauration of the NMW had coincided with a "worklessness crisis".

Workers successful the North East would beryllium hardest deed by scrapping the minimum wage.

7.4 per cent of workers crossed the portion are paid the minimum level. And successful Griffith's ain spot of Arundel and South Downs, determination an estimated 2,200 minimum wage workers.

This is not the archetypal clip a apical Tory has utilized a Taxpayers'Alliance lawsuit to onslaught the minimum wage. Speaking astatine the 2013 Conservative conference, James Cleverly, the erstwhile Tory enactment contender, said helium wanted to spot the minimum wage scrapped.