It has been claimed that Prime Minister Boris Johnson will be announcing a raise to the National Living Wage, bolstering this from £8.91 to £9.42 an hour.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to announce an increase in the National Living Wage in the coming weeks, various outlets have reported.
This would see the National Living Wage increase by 5.7 per cent, rising from £8.91 to £9.42 by 2022.
According to calculations, an employee working a 35 hour work week could now be set to receive an increase of over £900 before tax.
The National Living Wage age threshold was altered earlier this year to include workers aged 23 and 24, with this wage previously being exclusive to staff aged 25 or over.
When questioned about the prospect of an increase in National Living Wage, Mr. Johnson stated the Government “will take guidance from the low pay commission, and we will see where we get to.”
Earlier this year, the Low Pay Commission, an independent body responsible for guiding government’s policy linked to minimum wage, predicted that their recommendation for 2022 would be to increase the National Living Wage to £9.42 an hour.
It also outlined what changes could come into effect by 2024 including a National Living Wage of £10.33 and the age threshold being changed again to include people aged 21.
This news coincides with Mr. Johnson’s speech at the Conservative Party Conference which has re-iterated the Conservative Party’s “levelling up agenda”.
Speaking to the crowd, Mr. Johnson stated:
[My goal is to move the UK] towards a high wage, high skill, high productivity economy that the people of this country need and deserve.
The Prime Minister further denounced using “uncontrolled immigration” as a mode of filling job vacancies:
We are not going back to the same old broken model with low wages, low growth, low skills and low productivity, all of it enabled and assisted by uncontrolled immigration.
The answer is to control immigration, to allow people of talent to come to this country but not to use immigration as an excuse for failure to invest in people, in skills and in the equipment or machinery they need to do their jobs.
Ultimately, Prime Minister Johnson pledged he would undertake “the greatest project that any government can embark on” by “uniting and levelling up across the UK”.
Monica Sharma is an English Literature graduate from the University of Warwick. As Editor for HRreview, her particular interests in HR include issues concerning diversity, employment law and wellbeing in the workplace. Alongside this, she has written for student publications in both England and Canada. Monica has also presented her academic work concerning the relationship between legal systems, sexual harassment and racism at a university conference at the University of Western Ontario, Canada.
