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The Tory peer boss of fashion giant Next was slammed yesterday for claiming its £6.70-an-hour pay was “enough to live on”.

Lord Wolfson said the salary – just 3% above the minimum wage – was a decent amount for “a lot” of its staff.

He is worth an estimated £112million and earns a basic salary of £350 an hour.

Critics slammed his comments which came on the day Next announced its annual profits were up 12.5% to £782million.

Mick Rix, of the GMB union, called him “an out-of-touch arrogant hypocrite”.

Lord Wolfson criticised those calling for firms to pay staff a Living Wage, set at £7.85 across the country and £9.15 in London.

He said: “A living wage for a student is different for someone supporting a family. I think there are a lot of people for whom £6.70 is enough to live on.”

Lord Wolfson also said the clothing chain had 30 applicants for every job advertised and claimed increasing wages would prevent it opening more stores.

(Image: PA)

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said: “First a Conservative Chancellor tells families they’ve never had it so good.

"Then a Conservative lord tells his workers that poverty pay is good enough for them.”

Luke Hildyard, of the High Pay Centre, said: “Lord Wolfson sounds dangerously like a pub bore sounding off without knowing what they’re talking about.”

Rhys Moore, director of the Living Wage Foundation, said: “Thousands of Next’s staff need to claim benefits just to make ends meet. Very profitable companies are, in effect, receiving a taxpayer subsidy.”

Next’s £6.70-an-hour starting pay applies to workers aged 21 and over.

But it said once bonuses were taken into account, the average staff pay was £7.24, or 11% above the minimum wage.

The Government this week announced plans to increase the minimum wage to £6.50. Lord Wolfson pledged to increase Next’s minimum pay at the same time.

The Mirror revealed in November last year how Next was offering hundreds of jobs to Polish workers weeks before ­advertising them in Britain.

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Baron Wolfson of Aspley Guise

Simon Wolfson is the son of former Next chairman David Wolfson.

The 47-year-old studied law at Cambridge University but joined Next in 1991 as a sales assistant.

At just 33, he was made the youngest chief executive of a FTSE 100 company.

He is a prominent Tory supporter, having donated to David Cameron’s 2005 leadership campaign.

The bulk of his £112million is tied up in Next shares, amassed over the years.

Wolfson is one half of a glamorous Tory power couple — the other half being Eleanor Shawcross, George Osborne’s economic adviser and daughter of chairman of the Charity Commission William Shawcross.

Wolfson’s pay and perks package for 2013/14 was worth £4.6million.