While low pay and in-work poverty have risen up the economic agenda in recent years, our policy debate has been stuck in a loop. Ask most Labour politicians about low pay and you can expect a well-intentioned but passive mixture of pride in the minimum wage and warm words on the living wage before the topic is changed to the importance of protecting support like working tax credits.

Today's new figures from the ONS confirm what's been suspected for some time: low pay is fast becoming one of the defining economic challenges of our age.

On Monday almost a million workers received a pay rise, sort of. These workers, most of whom are women, are those who occupy the many jobs up and down the country that pay the National Minimum Wage (NMW). For anyone scanning the job centre website you'll see plenty of these jobs.

Next summer we won't have an Olympics. It's down to all of us to make sure that an August without sport or troops on the streets of London won't result in the kind of disturbance we saw last year.

Low pay it is having a deeply damaging effect on the lives of children in Britain. These children, whose parents, according to UNICEF, 'often work long hours or work several jobs to makes ends meet', face a long list of disadvantages: greater risk of obesity, heart disease and mental health problems.

Let's stop fixating on trying to wipe out the unpaid nature of internships. This could do much harm in fact, by reducing the number of employment experiences young people, particularly those from less privileged background with lower educational attainment, can engage with to get a foot in the door.