A minimum wage law tailor-made for Guernsey will be proposed by Commerce and Employment. Minister Stuart Falla hoped to bring ‘primary legislation or the whole gamut’ to the House by the end of 2006, he said in the States yesterday.

His department has been working on residual matters, such as discrimination in the workplace.

Earlier this week, an updated report on the issue was given to his department. ‘There is no lack of support for this initiative. It includes an adult and a youth rate,’ said Deputy Falla.

He said to the House during the corporate anti-poverty programme debate yesterday that it would be perverse, having set out a stall about raising income levels across the board, if the lowest-paid were disregarded and their wages were not also increased.

‘We should introduce minimum wage legislation that suits Guernsey’s capacity and its problems,’ he said.

He stressed that it had to be tailor-made for Guernsey’s particular predicament and not imported off the shelf from elsewhere.

A Commerce and Employment spokesman said last night that minimum wage legislation was one of the workstreams in its business plan and that it was still at the research stage.

The plan was to come back to the board in the next couple of months with an examination of what other places do and have done.

‘England has minimum wage legislation, as has Jersey, and other places have an adaptation of these.

‘We are looking at why they have implemented it in different ways, what has their experience been and how we can apply that to the Guernsey situation,’ said the spokesman.

‘We will say ﾓwe believe this is the best solution for Guernseyﾔ and it’s up to the States to decide whether it likes it or not.’

A minimum wage locally has been resisted several times over the past few years because there did not appear to be the appetite for it but the climate now could be swinging towards its introduction because of the States emphasis on trying to end relative poverty.

In the Policy Council’s Capp monitoring and update report last month, which included a workstream on the investigation into introducing such legislation, it highlighted a commitment for proposals to come forward in 2006.

It said that since the presentation of the last report in December 2004, Commerce and Employment had monitored the number of complaints that had been brought to its attention which would be generally categorised under a heading of ‘minimum wage provision’.

The action plan for 2006 was that evaluation of the potential benefit of introducing legislation would be concluded during the year and the department would then bring forward its recommendations.