British businesses should increase the wages of their staff and pay the living wage for lower paid workers as they enjoy record profits in the wake of the fall in oil prices, David Cameron has said.
In a sign that the Tories appreciate they need to intensify their efforts to meet Ed Miliband’s campaign on the cost of living crisis, the prime minister said that growing profits should be “passed through” in wage rises.
The prime minister called for companies to act after official figures show that the fall in oil prices in recent months has led to a 16-year high in the profitability of companies. The figures from the Office for National Statistics showed that corporate profitability, using a measure of the return on the cost of production, was 12% in the third quarter of 2014.