As reported by The Mirror, Chancellor Rishi Sunak is coming up with a plan to increase the UK's minimum wage to £10 an hour by the next General Election.
Discover our latest podcast
A boost in the economy
The scheme to increase the rate from its current £8.91 an hour is being devised as a way to boost the economy after the massive blow it took as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Financial experts have speculated that the increase could range anywhere from £9.50 to £10.50 an hour.
In addition to a minimum wage increase, Sunak is looking into allocating £560 million to provide Brits with tutoring in maths in an attempt to help them become more employable.
'High wage, high skill, high productivity'
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, earlier this year, said that a more progressive approach to employment needed to be taken in order to ensure Brits could bounce back from the pandemic:
We are not going back to the same old broken model with low wages, low growth, low skills and low productivity. That is the direction in which this country is going—towards a high wage, high skill, high productivity economy that the people of this country need and deserve.
Echoing these same sentiments, Deputy PM Dominic Raab said in an interview with BBC radio 4:
Our vision for the economy as we bounce back from this terrible pandemic, employment rising, youth unemployment going down, is also to make sure that wages are rising.
Before adding:
Now, real wages are rising on the latest quarterly figures, but we need to support that and we can't go back in the long term to being reliant on the addiction, if you like, of cheap, unskilled labour from abroad.
