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The Conservative health secretary has sparked outrage after suggesting that the low paid should work as hard as people in China in order to make up for the cuts to their tax credits being made by the government.
Jeremy Hunt suggested that the controversial cuts to the state-funded wages top-ups were a "very important cultural symbol".
He told a fringe meeting at the Conservative conference in Manchester on Monday:
My wife is Chinese. We want this to be one of the most successful countries in the world in 20, 30, 40 years’ time. There's a pretty difficult question we have to answer, which is essentially, are we going to be a country which is prepared to work hard in the way that Asian economies are prepared to work hard, in the way that Americans are prepared to work hard? And that is about creating a culture where work is at the heart of our success.
While Mr Hunt claims his comments have been "wilfully misinterpreted", unions saw his reference to China as a sign that he was encouraging sweatshop Labour in Britain.
Len McCluskey, general secretary of the Unite union, said:
In a country that already works some of the longest hours in the Western world, [Mr Hunt's] comments are simply an outrageous slur on the all too many workers juggling two and three jobs to put food on the table and a roof over their kids' heads.
Owen Smith, the shadow work and pensions secretary, said: "It is a kick in the teeth for working families to hear Jeremy Hunt patronisingly say that the reason they are struggling to pay the bills is because they are not working hard enough. When the truth is his government is ruining family finances right across Britain."
As the Independent's economics editor Ben Chu explained in his analysis:
Mr Hunt’s comments are inane on several levels. First by peddling the ancient Western stereotype of the Chinese work ethic he demonstrates an ignorance of the fact that (as groups such as China Labor Bulletin have shown) the long hours put in by young rural workers in China’s southern factories are often not a free choice but the result of management exploitation.
Second, the Health Secretary’s crass remarks show no awareness of the fact that, more broadly, the image of China as a country of cheap and docile labour is increasingly out of date. The number of illegal factory strikes has been rising in recent years. Chinese wages are actually being forced up as incomes rise and people aspire to more than sweatshop wages.
Perhaps most worrying of all Mr Hunt seems to have no clue what actually drives a country’s prosperity. It’s not long hours that generate higher living standards but smarter hours. China has an average level of output per head that languishes far below that of the UK. That’s why the typical Chinese person is still far poorer than the typical Briton.
As Chu concludes, perhaps it would have been better if Mr Hunt had done his own homework before telling others to work harder.
More: Lord Sugar - We should all move to China if Jeremy Corbyn is elected
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