our weekly newsletter <\/a>for exclusive and original coverage from ITV News. Direct to your inbox every Friday morning. <\/p>\nElsewhere, state pensions will rise 4.8% rise in line with average wages, which will give millions of pensioners an additional \u00a3575 this year, the government said. <\/p>\n
The biggest rise will be for those who became state pension age after April 2016, who will see their flat-rate state pension increase to \u00a3241.30 a week, giving them \u00a312,547.60 a year. <\/p>\n
Those who reached state pension age before April 2016 will see their state pensions increase to \u00a3184.90 a week, or \u00a39,614.80 a year – giving them an extra \u00a3439.40. <\/p>\n
Housing benefit and personal independence payments are also being uprated from today, and fathers will no longer need six months of service before they’re allowed to take paternity leave.<\/p>\n
Sir Keir Starmer said he understood concern over the economic impact of the Iran war Credit: PA<\/p>\n
“No matter the global uncertainty, my government will always be on the side of the British people in bearing down on the cost of living,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will never lose sight of how restless people are for change, and I am proud that today we are lifting nearly half a million children out of poverty, boosting support for pensioners, and delivering the biggest upgrade to workers\u2019 rights in a generation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Starmer also said he understood the concern over the ongoing economic impact of the US-Israeli war in Iran on the UK and other countries.<\/p>\n
“We are working closely with international partners to push for a de-escalation in the Middle East and the re-opening of the Strait of Hormuz,” Starmer said.<\/p>\n
“This is the most effective way to ease the pressure on the cost of living.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am clear that our response to the current global situation will define us for a generation, which is why we are taking the right long-term decisions now to ensure we emerge from this as a stronger, more secure nation.”<\/p>\n
From Westminster to Washington DC – our political experts are across all the latest key talking points. Listen to the latest episode below… <\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Benefits and pensions rise today as government policy changes aimed at easing the cost of living come into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":516605,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[84,4176,4174,4175,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-516604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}