Letter: Would a minimum wage cost jobs?

Sir: Anyone who shares your confidence that a statutory wage would not create unemployment would do well to look at the experience of Relais & Chateaux, the association of upmarket hotels and restaurants to which I belong.

My hotel employs 45 full-time- equivalent staff; our colleagues in France of directly comparable size employ 35. My French friends blame higher employment costs in France for the difference.

Legislation that gives a leg-up to the low paid at the expense of the unemployed is pointless.

Yours faithfully,

TIM HART

Proprietor

Hambleton Hall

Rutland