{"id":602549,"date":"2026-05-25T06:15:24","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T06:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/602549\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T06:15:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T06:15:24","slug":"sunak-calls-for-minimum-wage-quango-to-be-abolished","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/602549\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunak calls for minimum wage quango to be abolished"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\tSunday 24 May 2026 10:54 am\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\"Prime\t\tPrime Minister Rishi Sunak regrets hiking the living wage. (Getty Images)\t<\/p>\n

Former Chancellor and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said that his decisions to hike the national minimum wage backfired as he called for a quango overseeing low pay to be abolished.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sunak appeared to admit that his decision to increase the national living wage has contributed to job<\/a> struggles faced by young people.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In an article for The Sunday Times, Sunak took a swipe at business chiefs for failing to \u201cget publicly involved\u201d over wage growth debates as he called on ministers to take greater accountability.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The current framework on wages<\/a> sees the government set a remit for the Low Pay Commission (LPC) on the cost of living and hourly earnings, with the quango then making a recommendation on wage growth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The current government has also urged the LPC to gradually narrow the gap between pay bands for 18 to 20-year-olds with adults, though the move has been heavily criticised by economists who say businesses have become less likely to employ young people.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sunak said the quango should be abolished, with ministers taking full control and accountability over setting the national living wage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He said that he took the wrong decision to follow the LPC\u2019s recommendations as wage increases had outstripped productivity gains.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tRead more<\/p>\n

\t\t\tNext faces shareholder pressure over worker pay<\/a><\/p>\n

Sunak wrote: \u201cI decided that for a multimillionaire chancellor to overrule the LPC without any covering fire wasn\u2019t politically sensible \u2014 and so let that pay carry on rising. I now wish I\u2019d been braver and acted anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sunak calls for living wage overhaul<\/p>\n

He also called on Chancellor Rachel Reeves to freeze the rates of statutory wages until 2030 and to link national living wage to productivity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The remarks come against a bleak backdrop for young workers. In January to March 2026, the unemployment rate for 16 to 24-year-olds hit 16.2 per cent, up from 14.2 per cent the year before, with 729,000 young people out of work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, nearly a million \u2014 957,000 \u2014 were classed as Neets<\/a> (not in education, employment or training) in the final quarter of 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The minimum wage has been aggressively ratcheted up under successive governments. Under Sunak, the national living wage rose from \u00a38.91 in 2021 to \u00a311.44 by April 2024 \u2014 a near-10 per cent increase in a single year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Reeves has continued the trajectory, with the NLW rising to \u00a312.71 per hour from April 2026, accepted in full from the LPC\u2019s recommendation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Several business groups have flagged that April\u2019s jump in the NLW combined with higher employer National Insurance contributions last year created a \u201cperfect storm\u201d of cost pressures for businesses.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tRead more<\/p>\n

\t\t\tLondon to be hit hardest as jobs market struggles through 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

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\t\t\tPeople & Organisations\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sunday 24 May 2026 10:54 am Prime Minister Rishi Sunak regrets hiking the living wage. (Getty Images) Former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":602550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,3363,4229,59,205550,205551,50,229,1445,3721,56,735,54,55,41198],"class_list":["post-602549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-cost-of-living","tag-economics","tag-gb","tag-low-pay-commission","tag-neets","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-rachel-reeves","tag-rishi-sunak","tag-uk","tag-uk-government","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wage-growth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602549","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=602549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/602550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}