The Chancellor Jeremy Hunt will announce a pay rise for low-wage workers, with an increase in the national minimum wage from £10.42 to £11 an hour from next April.
Speaking at the Tory Party Conference in Manchester today Hunt will say
“This huge pay boost for the lowest paid will mean we continue to support the British people with the cost of living. In contrast, the Labour Party would hammer the lowest paid with their plans for reckless borrowing and unfunded spending — meaning higher inflation and higher taxes.”
He is also expected to announce that benefits claimants who fail to look for work will receive harsher sanctions.
Hunt is expected to say
“I am incredibly proud to live in a country where, as Churchill said, there’s a ladder everyone can climb but also a safety net below which no one falls. But paying for that safety net is a social contract that depends on fairness to those in work alongside compassion to those who are not.
On the same stage Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride will announce measures to tackle “deadbeat dads” who refuse to pay child maintenance, addressing complaints of snail’s-pace action by the Child Maintenance Service against separated parents who don’t pay up for their kids.
