But it also says, foolishly, that it will roll back reforms on pensions, dismissal of workers, sick pay and casual labour.
For example, the new job contract just agreed by the unions and employers after months of negotiation will enable employers to shed workers without the risk of going to a labour tribunal, but only at the price of higher pay-offs.
Britain's corporate taxes are in fact not all that high, according to a study by the World Bank and PricewaterhouseCoopers, an accounting firm, which looks at the percentage of earnings that companies pay overall (including labour taxes).
They were as appalled by the prospect of regional pay as the members opposite but Labour needed to do the decent thing and fess up to the fact that their own reforms had given trusts the power to pursue this option.
In these models, inequality was seen as a problem of pay differences, best addressed through taxes on labour incomes.
Ministers are currently passing legislation to get rid of the previous Labour government's policy of offering councils the chance to take part in pilot "pay-as-you-throw" schemes which charge households which create the most rubbish.
The wedge between an employer's cost of labour and a worker's net pay is a relatively modest 79% in America and 47% in Switzerland, compared with 200% in Italy.
Andrew George (Lib Dem, St Ives) attempted a synthesis of the two themes: regional pay was bad and Labour had let it happen - but perhaps they hadn't really meant to.
Then, starting in the 1990s, academic evidence started to build up about the minimum wage, in the US and the UK, suggesting that, at the very bottom of the labour market, telling companies to pay people a little more did not actually cost jobs.
After the Black Death killed a third of the population of medieval Europe, labour scarcity forced landowners to pay their workers better.
The leading case, Alden v Maine, was brought by a group of Maine probation officers suing for back pay under a 1938 federal labour law.
Labour leader Ed Miliband said the pay increases were part of a "something for nothing" culture, since the stock market had not risen to match them.
The power of trade unions has been reduced, national pay bargaining and other labour-market rigidities scrapped, and cuts in tax rates and stricter rules for claiming unemployment benefits have improved the incentive to work.
They have said they would spend the windfall gain from selling 4G licences even though Gordon Brown used the sale of 3G licences to pay down the debt, and even though Labour has said that any windfall from selling bank shares should be used in the same way.
Its principal theme was stated by Labour: the move towards regional pay deals by a consortium of NHS trusts in the South West was a thoroughly bad thing.
Another Labour peer, Lord Davies of Stamford, characterised the pay gap as "highly unsatisfactory and unedifying" and suggested that companies should have to publish reasons for the decisions they take over pay-scales.
It was one of the few times an oil sands project received such a designation, which also allows the company to reach a collective agreement with one union--in this case, the Christian Labour Association of Canada, whose members earn less and pay smaller dues than others--and apply it to workers from other unions.
Labour said it accepted in full the recommendations of the High Pay Commission and urged ministers to do the same.
When his scarlet uniform became a bit tatty he asked Dennis Healey, the chancellor of the exchequer in the then Labour government, if it would pay for a replacement.
His handling so far of the tricky welfare-reform issue has been assured, provoking neither indignation among Labour backbenchers nor yet the hostility of a Treasury reluctant to pay for expensive programmes to propel benefit claimants into work.
Democrats have suggested increasing revenues by closing some tax loopholes, including tax breaks for the oil and natural gas industry, for businesses that have outsourced labour from the US, and ensuring millionaires pay a tax rate of at least 30%.
Accommodating the Lib Dems' election pledge to relieve Scottish students of having to pay tuition fees, which were introduced for all British students by Labour a year ago, proved particularly thorny (see article).
ECONOMIST: From now on, Britain will have to get used to coalitions
Whereas workers' pay depends on the labour market (and has been kept down by the huge numbers of people joining the global economy), managers' bonuses are chiefly tied to returns on capital.
It is difficult to envisage wages taking off when the public sector is shedding jobs and facing a two-year pay freeze and there are 2.5m people unemployed, close to 8% of the labour force.
With over 5m people, or nearly one in five of the labour force, working for the state, any squeeze on public-sector pay or benefits can draw crowds on to the streets.
Car buyers pay for labour, steel and paint, but the price sticker may not reflect the full cost of the noxious goo the car factory spills into a river.
The pay that a worker can receive for their labour is limited, at the upper end, by the value of what they produce.
The cut in the duration and value of benefits may do something to improve the supply side of Germany's labour market, encouraging people to look for jobs rather than subsisting on state pay-outs.
"Where we're seeing the weakness in the labour market and in the UK economy is on the pay side, " said John Philpott, director of the Jobs Economist.
On that, Labour is silent: such details will be left to the post-election deliberations of a Low Pay Commission, to include representatives from business and the unions.
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