Jeremy Hunt says national living wage to rise to at least £11 an hour next year
Good morning. One reason why the Conservative party conference is difficult for Rishi Sunak is that, when Tory members were last given the chance to vote in a leadership contest, last summer, they voted for Liz Truss, not Sunak. As Truss’s premiership was collapsing, she appointed Jeremy Hunt as chancellor, despite the fact that he was also beating in the proceeding leadership contest, in 2019, by Boris Johnson. Hunt remains in post, and today he is delivering his first speech to the conference as chancellor. In Tory election terms, the government is quite literally being led by two losers.
In normal circumstances it would be easy to overlook this, but today the only person at the conference who has actually won a Tory leadership contest in the last decade, Truss herself, is speaking at a fringe event. It is the only speech she will be giving. The former PM clearly wants to be a powerbroker in the party in the event of a likely election defeat, and the rally will be a measure of how much support there is for the rightwing, free market faction she champions.
This morning Hunt has been doing a media interview round. As Pippa Crera and Rowena Mason report, overnight he announced that the minimum wage is going up and that sanctions for benefit claimants are being tightened.
The Tories have also released this excerpt from Hunt’s speech about the increase in the national living wage. Hunt will describe the national living wage as “another great Conservative reform”. While not quite a lie, this is monstrously misleading (in line with some of the claims Rishi Sunak was making yesterday). The national living wage is essentially the minimum wage, which was introduced by Labour after 1997 in the face of strong opposition from the Conservative party and which has turned out to be one of the most successful labour market reforms of the last 30 years. George Osborne renamed it the national living wage in 2015 when he made it more generous for the over-25s (now the over-23s), but it is not the same as the living wage set by the Living Wage Foundation.
Hunt will say:
Today I want to complete another great Conservative reform, the national living wage.
Since we introduced it, nearly two million people have been lifted from absolute poverty.
That’s the Conservative way of improving the lives of working people. Boosting pay, cutting tax.
But today, we go further with another great Conservative invention, the national living wage.
We promised in our manifesto to raise the national living wage to two thirds of median income – ending low pay in this country.
At the moment it is 10.42 and hour and we are waiting for the Low Pay Commission to confirm its recommendation for next year.
But I confirm today, whatever that recommendation, we will increase it next year to at least £11 an hour.
A pay rise for over 2 million workers.
The wages of the lowest paid over £9,000 a year higher than they were in 2010 – because if you work hard a Conservative government will always have your back.
Here is the agenda for the day.
8.30am: Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, speaks at a Rusi fringe meeting.
11am: Claire Coutinho, the energy secretary, opens proceedings in the main conference hall. Other speakers in the morning are Mark Harper, the transport secretary, at 11.15am and Lucy Frazer, the culture secretary, at 11.30am.
11am: James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, speaks at a fringe meeting on China.
12.30pm: Liz Truss, the former PM, speaks at a fringe event called the Great British Growth Rally. Other speakers include Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary, and Dame Priti Patel, the former home secretary.
2pm: Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, delivers his conference speech. The other afternoon platform speakers are Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, 2.15pm, Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, at 2.30pm, Thérèse Coffey, the environment secretary, at 2.45pm and Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, at 3pm.
3pm: Miriam Cates, Danny Kruger, Sir Jake Berry and Sir Iain Duncan Smith are among the speakers at a rally organised by the New Conservatives.
If you want to contact me, do try the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a laptop or a desktop. This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions very interesting, too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line; privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate); or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.
Key events
As Helena Horton reported yesterday, Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, flew from London to Manchester for the Conservative conference.
Asked about this on BBC Breakfast this morning, Hunt said:
I took a BA flight because I was told that my train had been cancelled.
He also said that he would probably be driving home on Wednesday because there is another rail strike that day.
Q: What is happening on social care? You promised reform, but nothing has happened?
Hunt says he allocated more money for social care last year.
Q: That’s not structural reform.
Hunt says, at the next election, Rishi Sunak will say to the country that he is the person to fix difficult problems. And he has done that already – for example, with the Windsor framework, which solved very complicated problems relating to the Northern Ireland protocol.
And that’s the end of Hunt’s today interview.
Q: You want to make the public sector more effective. But there are reports today that doctors are making profits from going on strike, because they can charge so much for strike cover.
Hunt says he wants to do things differently. In the past the Treasury has focused on short-term savings. For example, it might cancel an IT project. But that drives up costs in the long run.
He says he wants to reduce the amount of time doctors spend on admin.
Q: How are you going to change the work capability assessment (the test used to determine if people can get sickness benefits)?
Hunt says Mel Stride will set out the details in due course. But the intention is to ensure that people with medical conditions do not get parked on benefits. Could the government help them more by giving them treatment first?
Q: Do you think there are people gaming the system, turning down reasonable job offers?
There may be, says Hunt. “I don’t know.” But he says there is a social contract, where there is a safety net, but people are expected to work if they can.
Q: Are you going to force benefit claimants to work?
Hunt says the government cannot force people to work. But there are people who have been out of work for more than a year. The government will review sanctions. But it will also increase the value of the national living wage.
Q: Taxes are going up for people on low wages, because threshold are not going up.
Hunt says he accepts overall taxes have gone up. In his speech, he will chart a path to get them down. There will be a choice in politics, he says, because Labour is no proposing to cut taxes.
Q: So your message to Liz Truss is you won’t cut taxes now. What do you say to Michael Gove, who wants tax cuts before an election.
Hunt says he would like to cut taxes, but to do so now would be inflationary. Cutting inflation gives a boost to people, he says.
Q: Can you say when we will hear about HS2 to Manchester?
Hunt says he cannot answer that now. But he says, when the government makes an announcement, it must address why it costs 10 times more to build high speed rail in the UK than in France.
Nick Robinson is interviewing Jeremy Hunt on the Today programme at 8.10.
Q: You say you want to take long-term decisions in the national interest. But Liz Truss said exactly the same last year?
Hunt says the government had turned a corner over the past year. There are no short cuts, he says. The UK recovered faster than France and Germany after the pandemic. And inflation is down from 11%, he says.
Jeremy Hunt says national living wage to rise to at least £11 an hour next year
Good morning. One reason why the Conservative party conference is difficult for Rishi Sunak is that, when Tory members were last given the chance to vote in a leadership contest, last summer, they voted for Liz Truss, not Sunak. As Truss’s premiership was collapsing, she appointed Jeremy Hunt as chancellor, despite the fact that he was also beating in the proceeding leadership contest, in 2019, by Boris Johnson. Hunt remains in post, and today he is delivering his first speech to the conference as chancellor. In Tory election terms, the government is quite literally being led by two losers.
In normal circumstances it would be easy to overlook this, but today the only person at the conference who has actually won a Tory leadership contest in the last decade, Truss herself, is speaking at a fringe event. It is the only speech she will be giving. The former PM clearly wants to be a powerbroker in the party in the event of a likely election defeat, and the rally will be a measure of how much support there is for the rightwing, free market faction she champions.
This morning Hunt has been doing a media interview round. As Pippa Crera and Rowena Mason report, overnight he announced that the minimum wage is going up and that sanctions for benefit claimants are being tightened.
The Tories have also released this excerpt from Hunt’s speech about the increase in the national living wage. Hunt will describe the national living wage as “another great Conservative reform”. While not quite a lie, this is monstrously misleading (in line with some of the claims Rishi Sunak was making yesterday). The national living wage is essentially the minimum wage, which was introduced by Labour after 1997 in the face of strong opposition from the Conservative party and which has turned out to be one of the most successful labour market reforms of the last 30 years. George Osborne renamed it the national living wage in 2015 when he made it more generous for the over-25s (now the over-23s), but it is not the same as the living wage set by the Living Wage Foundation.
Hunt will say:
Today I want to complete another great Conservative reform, the national living wage.
Since we introduced it, nearly two million people have been lifted from absolute poverty.
That’s the Conservative way of improving the lives of working people. Boosting pay, cutting tax.
But today, we go further with another great Conservative invention, the national living wage.
We promised in our manifesto to raise the national living wage to two thirds of median income – ending low pay in this country.
At the moment it is 10.42 and hour and we are waiting for the Low Pay Commission to confirm its recommendation for next year.
But I confirm today, whatever that recommendation, we will increase it next year to at least £11 an hour.
A pay rise for over 2 million workers.
The wages of the lowest paid over £9,000 a year higher than they were in 2010 – because if you work hard a Conservative government will always have your back.
Here is the agenda for the day.
8.30am: Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, speaks at a Rusi fringe meeting.
11am: Claire Coutinho, the energy secretary, opens proceedings in the main conference hall. Other speakers in the morning are Mark Harper, the transport secretary, at 11.15am and Lucy Frazer, the culture secretary, at 11.30am.
11am: James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, speaks at a fringe meeting on China.
12.30pm: Liz Truss, the former PM, speaks at a fringe event called the Great British Growth Rally. Other speakers include Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary, and Dame Priti Patel, the former home secretary.
2pm: Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, delivers his conference speech. The other afternoon platform speakers are Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, 2.15pm, Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, at 2.30pm, Thérèse Coffey, the environment secretary, at 2.45pm and Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, at 3pm.
3pm: Miriam Cates, Danny Kruger, Sir Jake Berry and Sir Iain Duncan Smith are among the speakers at a rally organised by the New Conservatives.
If you want to contact me, do try the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a laptop or a desktop. This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions very interesting, too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line; privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate); or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.
