A NORTH-East MP has accused a supermarket giant of “cheating the living wage” while a shareholder and descendant of its founder has reportedly paid more than £3m for a listed stately home in her constituency.

Bishop Auckland MP, Helen Goodman, criticised Morrisons in a speech given in Parliament as part of the Backbench Debate: Living Wage Week and the implementation of the National Living Wage, on Thursday.

The Northern Echo: Helen Goodman

Helen Goodman MP

Mrs Goodman said she was “shocked” to find out that previously paid breaks and Sunday premiums of time-and-a-half had been “abolished” by the company so that even though employees’ basic rate had increased from just under £7 to £8.20, staff were actually worse off.

“This has impacted particularly badly on those working regular weekends. One of my constituents gained a miserly £1.64 per week. Their partner told me this had caused a lot of ‘heartache’. That was her word ‘heartache’,” she said.

A Morrisons spokesman has dismissed Mrs Goodman’s claims saying the company could “guarantee that nobody will be worse off this year as a result of the changes that have been made” and that “the vast majority of our colleagues will be substantially better off”.

However, he refused to comment on the specific changes Mrs Goodman mentioned.

Mrs Goodman said she was also astonished to learn that the founder’s great-grandson of the same name, William Morrison, had recently bought Mortham Tower, near Barnard Castle, for £3.2m – £200,000 more than the asking price.

“I’m afraid this paints a picture of modern capitalism which is ugly and exploitative. I’m not sure what his great grandfather would have made of this – but there seems to me to be something very Victorian about ‘The rich man in the castle, the poor man at his gate’,” she said.

“This inequality is not necessary; it’s not efficient, it’s not just; it’s wrong. There’s only one word for what’s going on and that’s greed.”

The Northern Echo is currently seeking a response from Mr Morrison.