WAGE HIKE
National Living Wage to rise to £8.21 from April 2019 – meaning £690 extra per year
The current living wage is £7.83 - meaning a huge 5% boost for Britain's lowest paid workers
BRITAIN'S lowest-paid workers will get another payrise from next year to a minimum of £8.21 per hour.
The Chancellor said today he would hike the National Living Wage once again - up from £7.83 - but it won't affect everyone.
2
It's a five per cent hike, which will come into force from April, and will benefit around 2.4million workers.
Mr Hammond said today: "From April [the National Living Wage] will rise again, handing a full-time worker a £690 annual pay increase."
But experts said it was still below what many need to live on - what they called a "real living wage".
And it doesn't apply to those under 25 either.
Tess Lanning, Director of the Living Wage Foundation, said:
“Today’s announcement of the rise in the government minimum wage is a welcome step towards closing the gap with the real Living Wage based on what people need to make ends meet.
"But the number of people paid less than the real Living Wage has increased this year, with millions of workers struggling to keep their heads above water. That’s why, more than ever, we need more employers to step up and commit to pay the real Living Wage, not just the government minimum.”
Bryan Sanderson, chair of the Low Pay Commission, said: “The increase in the National Living Wage (NLW) to £8.21 in April 2019 will ensure a pay rise for the lowest-paid workers that exceeds both inflation and average earnings.
“Over the past year, the labour market has continued to perform well and the economy, while subdued, has met the criteria of ‘sustained growth’ set out in our remit for the NLW. We therefore recommended an increase in line with a path to 60 per cent of median earnings by 2020.”
On current forecasts the National Living Wage could reach £8.62 an hour by 2020.
The small print on the National Living Wage
- Increasing the National Living Wage from £7.83 to £8.21
- Increasing the rate for 21 to 24 year olds by 4.3% from £7.38 to £7.70 an hour
- For 18 - 20 year olds, a boost of 4.2% from £5.90 to £6.15
- For apprentices their pay will go up 5.4% from £3.70 to £3.90 her hour
MOST READ IN POLITICS
2
Highlights of today's Budget include:
- The national living wage rising to £8.21 per hour, up 4.9 per cent on last year
- A £500million pot for No Deal Brexit preparations
- Fuel duty frozen for the ninth year in a row - in a victory for The Sun
- Duty on beer, cider and spirits frozen while tobacco tax goes up again
- An extra £2billion for mental health, with specialists installed in every school and hospital, and £650million for social care
- The Ministry of Defence will get another £1billion to keep Britain's military in shape
- New funding to repair crumbling roads across the country and end the country's pothole epidemic, adding up to £30billion over five years
- £400million for schools - adding up to £10,000 per primary and £50,000 for every secondary
- An increase of £160million for counter-terror policing
- The end of PFI contracts in the wake of Carillion's collapse
- £1.5billion more to help out the struggling High Street - including a cut to business rates
- Interest-free loans to Brits who can't repay their debts to payday lenders
- Tweaks to the law on weddings which will allow many more venues to host cut-price ceremonies
- Visitors from the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan will be able to use e-gates at airports - currently open only to EU citizens
- A new 50p coin commemorating the moment we quit the EU in March next year
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online politics team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours